Streets of Nasr City neighborhood in
Cairo – where I live – turn into water channels every morning due to thousands
of Bawabeen[1]
who extend water hoses from taps fixed over small tubs near the entrance of
every building, or from taps near the basement, to wash the cars as it’s a
source of income for them… water pile in the main streets like Makram Ebied,
Abbas El-Akkad, at-Tayaran, Hassan Ma’amoun, Ahmed Fakhry and others… and it
can keep flooding if sewerage outlets are blocked due to tens of groceries and
restaurants throwing their garbage in those outlets… and so, the neighborhood,
like tens if not hundreds other neighborhoods spread in the big cities, floats
over big quantities of wasted clean water…
The case is even worse if we put into
our consideration tens of hundreds of mosques ranging from very big into very
small ones… those mosques spreading rightly or unjustifiably across our country…
when I say unjustifiably, I mean those mosques below buildings which were
established as a pretext to violate the law in the permitted height of the
building and illegally providing utilities like water and electricity… not to
mention that many of them were established to launder both money and conscience
of their owners; those who bribe and accept bribes and other corrupted persons
who steal people’s money by gambling on lands and real estate… and who are
directly involved in corrupting most of the Egyptian administrative
institutions responsible for applying the law and order in buildings’
construction regulations like construction ratios over lands, height of
buildings, providing utilities and overseeing the execution of legal verdicts
regarding demolition, confiscation and others…
We are used to see the place of
ablution in mosques supplied with toilettes and places for people to wash
before prayers… and the scene of water pouring heavily from opened taps while
the one washing is completely soaking himself…then he leaves the tap open which
is usually jiggered and so one cannot close it… then he enters the mosque, which
in turn is usually furnished with moquette like the mode goes in gulf
countries, with water dripping of him while he is trying to pass rows of those
sitting to get nearer as possible to the first row to be granted double
blessings!... During all this, he doesn’t pay attention; nor the mosque’s
servant or Imam, to the wasted water… they don’t remember for a moment all the
Sunni sayings of prophet Muhammed calling for economizing in using water even
if we are standing over a running river.
Moving to the countryside, we will
find that gravity irrigation is the eternal way of irrigating describing all
the Egyptians’ relation to agriculture and arable land… I even go further and
say that I believe this kind of irrigation was one of the factors outlining the
behavior of the Egyptian personality… and that it is directly connected to the
endemic diseases that we have been and are still suffering from; whether Schistosomiasis, hookworm infection, Ascariasis or Amoeba… or even kidney failure, liver
failure and cancers of all kinds!
I witnessed and even experienced
myself along with my relatives how to operate waterwheels in the irrigation
process… I remember while I was running with my cousins to close the water off
one of the basins and open it to another… and how careful we were lest the
plants get drowned or the water is left to moisten our neighbors’ land… in
general, there was what I can call the culture of gravity irrigation and what
relate to it like erecting small waterwheels, big pistons, the making of their
wooden gears, metal boxes, maintaining them, overseeing the water flow lest
someone may change it over night, guarding the cattle lest they fall in the
wheel well…etc.
Now, irrigation pumps and digged well
on top of a certain field are used to irrigate several fields… what I want to
say about gravity irrigation is that it wastes water, affects the soil fertility
and crops’ productivity and consequently the human behavior and maybe way of
thinking and man’s relation to others as well.
Despite I’m not an expert in
irrigation and water issues, I have a very important question to ask: how do we
manage the River Nile crisis in its domestic side directly connected to us
starting from water taps in homes and mosques and not ending by irrigation
channels in Delta and Upper Egypt… adding to this what we did in the reservoir
of groundwater in the desert and how we deliberately wasted it over certain
crops… also in golf vast courtyards and artificial lakes in rich people’s gated
communities of residential compounds and beach resorts?
This is not an invitation for Ethiopia
to say that the problem with Egypt is the way we use the river water… as I
stand against the Ethiopian intransigence by all means to secure the life of our
coming generations… however, it’s an invitation for all of us to reread our
cultural social economic reality and detect all the values and practices
hindering progress, destroying development and wasting our resources and
potentials in more than one field.
We all use the main road of Salah
Salem and its extension in Al-Orouba when we get surprised – or we should say
not surprised – and even feel pain and sometimes boredom and desire to flee
life in the capital when we get stuck at certain points before ceremonial halls
associated to big mosques, whether the occasion was concluding marriage
contracts, conducting funeral prayers or participating in funeral service… although
I know that a very elegant and luxurious mosque; that is Al-Rahman Al-Rahim
mosque, or Toshiba mosque are not authorized in their construction licenses to
have such ceremonial halls… it happened that I and others, who get trapped in
this area due to cars parking before the mosque in two or three lines blocking
the traffic, turn back and take other streets through the neighborhoods of Abdo
Pasha and Abbassyia to reach our works.
And although high iron fences were
erected, streets around the mosque were closed, and police patrols and hoisting
cranes almost always exist there, you can still find a fool one, who thinks
himself a VIP or son of one, parking his car in a no-parking place!... the same
applies to ash-Shorta or Police mosque, as it could have been constructed
elsewhere or its location been modified in a way that doesn’t lead to blocking
that vital route of Salah Salem in the heart of the paralyzed capital…
Also, on the other side of the street,
one find other mosques with ceremonial halls in addition to many other clubs
and social houses holding the names of different arms of the armed forces… I,
and many others as well, don’t mind and have no objection over such activities providing
services for our soldiers, officers and their families as we do care about
them… but those clubs and social houses along with their ceremonial halls could
have been constructed elsewhere away from Salah Salem road as there are many
other places in Cairo and Giza that are not less important.
We tackle matters some may see as
embarrassing or it’s not the right time to discuss them… however, I think it’s
time to open all files… and time to feel embarrassed to discuss any issue is
gone now…
The society shall not pay the price
for anyone who want to guarantee himself a palace in heaven that looks like the
mosque he donated to build… or another wishing to launder his corrupt
conscience by turning the basement or ground floor of his building into a
mosque where he hires an incompetent person to work as Imam and advise people
in issues related to their life and doctrine.
The River Nile water issue lies at the
heart of the complicated complex phenomena that control our daily life… let’s
make it the beginning to start addressing all the values and practices
hindering development and progress.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in Al Ahram
newspaper on March 13, 2014.
To see the original article, go to:
#alahram #ahmed_elgammal #river_nile #water
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