We, Egyptians, go to other countries either on short
or long visits… to work or to stay… we have nothing but to respect the laws and
traditions of those societies… we dare not go through the traffic lights… we dare
not bypass the road lane… we dare not dodge between the cars… or go fast from
the far right to the far left at the entrances of tunnels or bridges not paying
any respect for the line of cars waiting to enter the tunnel or go over the
bridge.
I can continue narrating the acts that we dare not do
including using the toilette siphon after a certain hour at night, throwing
away cigarettes’ ends in the streets, beating carpets on the balconies’ walls,
pouring the dirty cleaning water from the balconies…etc.
Moreover, we excel at work abroad… we bear a lot of
difficulties that if we bore them in our homeland, we would have been in
another status… as the peasant leaves his fertile land that is
gravity-irrigated and goes to work in a farm deep far in the desert… also, his
work there in not only limited to cultivation and farming but extends to other
tasks including guarding, cleaning and submitting to the employer’s orders
without discussing… he is the same peasant that accepts to work in tiles’
factories or digging ground wells by hand in the worst conditions of hot and moist
weather… if that peasant exerted half this effort in our fertile old land or the
other newly-reclaimed one, he would have become better-off.
The same thing applies to the rest of higher-rank
positions reaching to the engineer, journalist, doctor and university professor…
as everyone is keen to commit to the rules, excel, and stir no troubles or excuses
of not receiving a reasonable salary comparable to the effort he exerts.
Perhaps the only negative practice that Egyptians may
have abroad is their lack of experience regarding what we can call “rules of
existence in diaspora”… I here mean the inter-relations among individuals and
families of the Egyptian community… and between the Egyptian community and the
rest of communities… also with the authorities… as it was always said that the
worst troubles the Egyptian may have in work or abroad come from his own fellow
Egyptians… also that the Egyptians are not good at helping or supporting each
other… things even went worse after January, 2011 revolution as the phenomenon
became clearer when dispute and disagreement went to a level that does not
distinguish between Egypt; homeland and state… and between the regime, government
and political orientations.
The amount of negative acts that stick to us;
Egyptians inside our country and that have to do with our daily behavior and
our relation to what lies outside our homes starting from the door entrance… the
place of the garbage bin or bag… the stairs… the entrance of the building… not
to mention our relation to the street starting from the way of parking cars… piling
dust next to the pavement… breaking traffic lights and rules… driving in the
opposite direction… the way we deal with the humble police conscript standing in the boiling hot or freezing cold weather… throwing cigarettes’ butts and
empty packets from cars’ windows along with used Kleenex, sandwiches’ plastic
bags, fruits’ pealed skin especially bananas, mandarins and oranges… also, the
audacity of some to spit and hawk from the window or by opening the door while
waiting at the traffic light feeling no shame or commitment to the public hygiene
while the car cassette is set loud with religious supplications or reciting Quran…
or even ugly voices shouting uglier lyrics and melodies.
I have always thought and discussed with others over
the importance of diligent hard work to change people behavior in Egypt… as miss-behavior
has nothing to do with the economic situation or the social class… for example,
one can see some driving a more than a million pound-worth car and wearing gold
rings and cufflinks and maybe also gold necklace around their necks while they commit
the worst acts of behavior.
The very logic question now is: can we pour tons of
inks over tons of papers to publish newspapers, magazines and books and along
with this spending billions of pounds over satellite channels to talk about
democracy, Dawaa discourse and history eras starting from the time of
Salah ed-Din to the time of July, 1952 revolution and Nasser… etc., while there
is no real scientific and practical planning for a comprehensive societal cultural
renaissance in a way that can make us behave as if Cairo is a Gulf country,
European or American city where we can never think of committing something that
may break the laws or customs?
In my opinion, this is an essential crucial case in
our life as Egyptians… because the image we give to other non-Egyptians;
whether our Arab brothers, foreign friends or those who are not brothers or
friends but ordinary visitors who came as tourists or for investment… this
image contains those outrageous behaviors that reveal the cultural and
civilization deterioration we suffer today.
I wonder when the school teacher can accompany her
class of the age range of five or six years in a journey to teach them ethics
and rules of traffic in the street and how to deal with traffic lights, signs
of pedestrians’ lanes and how to cross the square from one side to the other in
a proper way… and how can that child who has been taught the ethics and rules
of traffic affect his father the driver; either driver of a cab or a wealthy owner
of a Mercedes car to pay his attention to his miss-behavior and ask him why he
does this?
There are many other questions like when and how can
we respect our homes, allies and streets… when will we respect our life and
deal with our country as sacred?
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in
Al Ahram newspaper on June 29, 2017.
To see the original article,
go to:
#alahram #ahmed_elgammal
#Egypt
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