It is the Arabic equivalent of an angry spouse slamming the door and shouting, "I've had it with you!"
The decision of an Egyptian opposition party, the Wafd Party, to use one word -- which literally means "we have been suffocated" -- as a political slogan, and the government's permission for its use, has created a huge stir in Egypt's first multicandidate presidential elections.
No one is saying democracy has suddenly arrived in Egypt. Even government supporters acknowledge that the race is one-sided, and that none of President Hosni Mubarak's nine opponents has much chance of victory in the vote scheduled for Sept. 7.
But the campaign season has redefined the boundaries of what is considered acceptable political discourse, with the government allowing the use of the slogan in newspapers while banning it on television.
This one word -- itkhanana -- has the town talking.
While the word comes from the root "to strangle," it is used in everyday conversation as an expression of exasperation, and its use as a political slogan has resonated here because it has captured the public mood -- tired, angry and fed up, linguistic experts and political commentators have been saying.
"In Egypt it is revolutionary," said Nabil Shawkat, a linguist based in Cairo.
"You are using a word that is a borderline insult as a slogan of a campaign," he said.
The race for the presidency officially began last week, and candidates are stumping around the nation.
Mubarak has also gone on the campaign trail, delivering speeches, laying out an agenda and sprinkling in actual plans for what would be his fifth six-year term as president, should he win.
One candidate, Ayman Nour, of the Tomorrow Party, paraded through the streets of Cairo in an open horse-drawn carriage last Wednesday, the first day of campaigning.
But so far, nothing has quite captured the public's attention -- or defined the opportunities, as well as the limits of this new campaign season -- as the Wafd political advertisements.
Wafd is one of Egypt's oldest parties, with a grand liberal tradition, and a reputation for being somewhat staid and out of touch. The party is running its chairman, Noaman Gomaa, against Mubarak.
When the campaign began, Wafd leaders settled on that one word as their defining theme.
"This is exactly the way the Egyptians feel," party spokesman Muhammad Sherdy said.
"This is exactly our feeling. We are suffocating. We have reached our limits, in everything," he said.
The phrase recalls the scene in the 1976 movie Network when the character Howard Beale shouts on television, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
The Egyptian authorities were at first neither nostalgic nor amused by the Wafd slogan. They refused to print the advertisement in the state-owned national newspapers, Sherdy said.
He said the advertisement had been permitted only after Wafd leaders threatened to boycott the campaign unless the word was permitted.
The newspapers relented, though the word remains banned from television advertisements.
"We are trying, we are trying inch by inch, to get democracy, for God sake, in a country that is so scared," Sherdy said.
"If they tell you this shows there is democracy, they are doing this and allowing this just to get the chance to say, `See, there is democracy,'" he said.
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