At the beginning of the ‘80s, I managed, along with my
wife, to save a sum of money in order to buy a flat in Nasr City after we had
worked for four years in a Gulf country… she is a physician and I am a
journalist.
I remember the “high-level delegation” accompanying me
in order to meet the owner of the buildings and her assistant; the mechanic boy
whose title became “Bashmohandes” or engineer… and who, in turn, became
an owner of several buildings… that woman, who was known by al-Hajja[1],
along with another woman were the magnates of selling apartments in Nasr City
and Heliopolis before that famous tycoon of Nasr City appeared.
They were all professional in violating laws of
construction… whether regarding heights allowed or the percentage of the
building area to the whole area… I thank God for I and my family survived death
under the rubbles of Heliopolis’ building that collapsed during the 1992 earthquake…
as al-Hajja offered in the beginning to the “high-level delegation” that
came to mediate for me to give me an apartment in “Hollopolos” building…
that’s how she used to pronounce Heliopolis… the price offered was 85 thousand
pounds while Abbass al-Aqqad building apartment costed 40 thousand pounds.
That was the very beginning for practicing bullying against
the state, its laws, institutions, and authorities… when that amoral
cooperation between a certain kind of capital and corrupt people in some
official entities took place… to the degree that made that woman’s son during
the heated argument we had over the grave violations they made in the building
say to me in front of the respected people present: “what law, Mister?... I can
build a building tomorrow in the middle of the garden lying in the heart of
Abbass al-Aqqad Street”.
It all started in those dark days when those who
violated all that is legal and lawful went on their way until crimes of
buildings’ violations became the norm… and the ironic exception is to adhere to
the law’s regulations and conditions… I still remember that day when a huge
building in Abbass al-Aqqad Street collapsed over its inhabitants and the crowded
market lying in the first floor… I remember when then-Cairo governor Dr.
Abdelrahim Shehata said that all Nasr City buildings were prone to collapsing…
as cement, steel bars, and necessary specifications for construction were all violating
the standard criteria.
Starting from that time and place; meaning in the upper-class
neighborhoods in the time of Infitah and its peak during the eighties…
until here in our present time as we live in this state of horrible bullying
practiced against the state’s lands and property… against the river, its
territory and what comes out of it… against the sea and its shores… we all live
a tragedy of behavioral, cultural, and civilization deterioration… that is not
committed by the poor and ignorant alone… but also by others belonging to the
educated rich of high social classes and perhaps occupying prestigious
positions.
In such regard, I may go back in time to what may be
entrenched for many reasons in the negative side of the Egyptian character… as
those who come from the countryside – like me – know those many who dare to eat
out parts of the road, the river Nile banks, main, medium, and small water
channels… and who feel no shame to shovel the boundaries of the cemetery area…
and even steal the irrigation water from the neighbor who runs the water pump
or water wheel… etc., all these practices that I will detail in the coming
lines.
As to the road, it starts with a width of 20 meters…
then at the end of harvesting a crop and planting another, owners of the fields
overlooking the road start to plow, till, and level their fields as a
preparation for planning, irrigating, and planting it… then you see axes and plows
starting to eat out several centimeters from the road edge… year after year,
these centimeters become quarters of meters… and the road shrinks from one wide
enough to allow the side-by-side passing of two tractors into a twisting narrow
one hardly wide enough for a buffalo or donkey to pass… and they all start
their mission after they perform Fajr prayers and before sunrise;
meaning before the authority, represented in the agricultural cooperative,
village chief, and guards, wake up… and before the road gets busy with people
including those who have relatively far fields but this road is the only way to
reach their fields… problems and quarrels usually happen because of this… then
the iron marks defining the road width are put… but how easy it is for many to
transfer “ar-Ragma”; the stiff rock separating between fields and
outlining the beginning and ending of each neighbor’s property…
Also, how easy it is to steal the irrigation water
either from the state by opening the water locks at night and bribing those who
guard them or steal it from the neighbors… as the one stealing makes a hole in
the muddy barrier blocking the water channel leading to his field during his
neighbor’s turn in irrigation… the muddy barrier looks standing while water is easily
passing through it but not easily noticed unless the neighbor goes into the water
channel and discovers the hole.
Not to mention the pleasure of stealing the ripe
ready-to-be-grilled “corncobs” and hiding the stealth by uprooting the whole
corn stalk and filling its place and not only snatching the “corncob” and
leaving the stalk erecting so that the field owner does not notice the crime…
And when winter comes and there is not enough dry
rubble to put under the cattle feet in barns… the one stealing goes to the cemetery
usually erecting since old times over a hill so that water does not reach it
during flooding… then he uses his axe to cut the edges of the hill even if his
axe unearthed his ancestors’ bones… there are many more cases of practicing
aggression over others’ property… whether that other was the state or people.
Now, we find ourselves in a dilemma that many long wrote
about… that is the serious leader, who loves his country and is keen to protect
its people, is sometimes regarded as acting in the opposite side of what people
want… since people, in times of deterioration and cultural and political
decline, get used to and even master practicing all that hinder the
institutional work, law regulations, and fundamentals of comprehensive development…
in times when individual solution becomes the answer to individual salvation
even if on the expense of others and against the law and norm… also
interpretation of the religious doctrine is distorted in order for this
misleading twisted interpretation to provide the ethical cover for the crime.
And when things change and someone leads the society
into its collective salvation in an institutional and scientific manner… then
he will definitely turn into an enemy of the people… and those fishing in the
troubled waters will start targeting the nastiest feelings of human beings;
that is the feeling of individual salvation over the expense of the state and
society in general.
I guess the message is delivered.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in
Al Ahram newspaper on July 20, 2017.
To see the original article,
go to:
#alahram #ahmed_elgammal
#Egypt #fighting_corruption
No comments:
Post a Comment