While I was reading an article for ambassador and
intellectual Mr. Abdel-Ra’ouf ar-Ridi in last Friday’s Al Ahram newspaper
edition, I remembered what I read long time ago about the European renaissance
and how one of the most important features at the beginning and set off of this
renaissance was the efforts exerted by the Medici family that ruled Tuscany and
Florence at the beginning of the modern era. This family believed and practiced
the civilization and cultural role of wealth and responsibility of managing the
society affairs. The princes of this family were famous for assuming such role,
atop of them was prince Lorenzo the magnificent about whom it was said that he declared
his intention to sell the furniture of Medici family houses to continue
building the public libraries in Tuscany and Florence.
Ambassador ar-Ridi wrote about sources of terrorism
and focused on the role of public libraries in building the civilization and
cultural renaissance in Egypt… and of course the scientific and technical ones…
he inaugurated the invitation to start building a thousand public libraries in
Egypt… here I excerpt part of his article: “… since Egypt’s situation now is
not only deteriorated in the public libraries’ field, but in the field of
scientific research… as per the index of the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO), Egypt lies almost at the last rank preceded by all other
Arab countries except for Algeria and Yemen… as to the UAE, it occupies the
first rank with Jordan following it in the second place”.
From this space of opinion pages of Al Ahram, I agree
to this invitation and call upon everyone interested in the renaissance of this
country to do the same thing so that this invitation sent by ambassador ar-Ridi
can reach president Sisi to support the initiative of building a thousand
public libraries in Egypt and issuing a law that makes reading a basic right for
every citizen and having a public library a fundamental right for every human
community… especially that there are many nations that precede us in such field…
for example, there is a public library for every 28 thousand people in India…
also, Iran has achieved better than this… and the Zionist state is even more
and more advanced in such regard.
In my opinion, the hope in achieving the renaissance
of our country in all fields starts by building the citizens’ awareness of their
important role in achieving such hope… it is also known that building and increasing
awareness is qualitatively and quantitatively connected to culture… we also
know that means of reading have developed and that it is now available to have
a flash memory, the one you can attach to your keys’ ring, which can hold
hundreds of books in all fields… for this reason, I have already called more than
once in my writings and TV interviews to start a campaign titled “a flash
memory for every class”… this flash memory shall include well-chosen books regarding
subjects and level to match the age range of those who shall read them.
I would like also to widen the scope of the invitation
to include all the well-offs of Egypt and all civil communities; whether
political parties, non-governmental organizations and all their likes in the countryside,
desert and small towns to share in a collective work and go to the ministry of
domestic development, that our good fortune happened to bring a great scientist
and pioneering expert in the scientific and IT field on top of it, to start
establishing the public libraries nationwide… next to reading and listening
rooms, there shall be other halls for seminars and theatrical and artistic
performances in general… and so, all who cannot find space to practice such activities
in schools and universities shall go to these libraries… in doing so, the
public libraries will turn into focal points of collective and creativity
activities in all Egypt… side by side with youth clubs and residences of public
culture… here I wonder about the current status of these two since we are about
to fulfill our hope in building the renaissance of our country!
Ambassador ar-Ridi, that 80-years-old young man full
of energy with his agile mind always wondering, has exerted a big and
distinguished effort in the field of establishing and fostering public
libraries so that they do not disappear with time… and he is still trying hard
to fulfill the hope of working on building the first thousand public libraries
so that we can have one for every hundred thousand Egyptian citizens… such
thing might seem unachievable if we compared the percentage to other countries
we mentioned above however we hope we can begin the journey of thousand miles with
a single step… this step is the establishment of thousand libraries.
In such regard, the brave city of Suez is waiting to
be the first one of the governorates’ capitals to have such public library as a
first step… I knew that the land is already available… only the entity that
will fund such project is left… as to the content of the library, ambassador
ar-Ridi has promised to provide all support to have an international level of
quality… and so I ask Mr. Hesham esh-Sherif; minister of domestic development
to foster such project so that the efforts of providing the possibilities of
building the public library of Suez are done under the auspices of the
ministry.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in
Al Ahram newspaper on April 20, 2017.
To see the original article,
go to:
#alahram #ahmed_elgammal
#Egypt #culture #renaissance #1000_libraries_project
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