The telephone
calls I received from some officials of the ministry of interior about what I wrote
last week of what is happening in some organizations affiliate to the ministry
is a good thing and behavior because it means there are some who read, cared
and communicated with the one in trouble… but what took my attention is that
there were two perspectives of tackling the matter.
One is paying
attention to the procedural part – if one can say – and neglecting the main
issue as I found some insisting on knowing when, how and who exactly I dealt
with in order to get my request done… I tried to explain this is not the main
issue or the most important thing about the whole matter because what happened
simply is that someone found us angry and incapable of doing anything and so he
offered to get the whole thing done for us in exchange for a “tip”!... It is
the same “tip” anyone may give to the one appointed by one of the officials to
get the job done… and of course, we will swear on all oaths and insist while we
pass along the long corridor that this appointed one must take this very simple
“tip”… and even thank him for his generosity!
The other
angle or perspective is the most important one which the official in charge of
inspection in the ministry of interior paid attention to… it is about changing
the current situation in branches of civil status organization, traffic and
other departments and widening the headquarters in any way… either vertically
by building more floors above police stations… or horizontally by applying my
previous suggestion of allocating adequate spaces of any land affiliate to the
state.
Also, the
necessity to have emergencies plans … meaning what to do in case of a high number
of people asking for services… either by erecting a pavilion and providing it
with chairs… or increasing the number of serving windows and distributing them
precisely over the required services; meaning one for issuing national ID
cards, another for birth certificates, third for so... etc. I am sure leaders
of the interior ministry has more efficient solutions than what suggested by an
unspecialized citizen like me.
What is
important to say is that every state or government has its own mites eating
away its foundations… or its clothes moths turning its fabric into torn one
filled with holes unable to be stitched back again… those mites or moths are
those situations or people which or who whenever combined, they foil and
destroy any effort or achievement.
We were also told
in the stories mentioned in Quran what mites can do when prophet Soliman – who was
given what no one else before or after him was given – was standing leaning on his
stick watching the Genie serving under his command, working and terrified of
him…then he died and his body stayed standing leaning over his stick while the
Genie are watching him from far not daring to quit what they do and not knowing
he was dead until the mites ate away his stick and so it was not able to hold
the body of prophet Soliman anymore and got broken… then his body fell to the
ground long time after his death.
And so I ask
and call upon all ministers and senior officials of aides, especially of
authorities dealing face to face with Egyptians like the civil status
registries, traffic department, real estate registration and notarization authority,
schools in the time of submitting papers and others… please, do not leave the
mites eat away “sticks” of regime… do not underestimate the “moths” turning the
state fabric into torn one… do not waste the golden support any ruling regime
can have; that is the sympathy of the public and its belief in the patriotism
and integrity of the ruler
This golden
support and backup can be squandered if the entrance to the real estate
authority turned into a vegetables’ market and male and female employees left their
work to buy and process vegetables in preparation to go home and cook them!... If
the civil registry headquarter turned into a tight cell where people cannot
take their breath and employees unable to be seen from the serving windows… if
traffic windows turned into outlets for receiving bribes and “tips”… if the
female employees had rubber bands around their wrests at their sleeves to fasten
the “money tips” they receive… if ears turned deaf to the problems we suffer in
our everyday life.
Again, I thank
those gentlemen who called me of the ministry officials, especially major
general Muhammed Raggool who had an open-minded mentality and deep awareness of
the real dimensions of the problem.
Now I move to
what I think is a light-hearted talk compared to talking about problems… it is
my childhood memories or better to say boyhood… when the Suez Canal was
submitted to nationalization and the colonial international conspiracy against
our country started and countries like Britain, France, the Zionist Hebrew
state “Israel” participated in.
I was ten
years old… we were in our village Ganag to get away from hearing the
bombings sounds we used to hear clearly while we were living in the city of
Dessouq… we sat at the house courtyard and there was an old man; neighbor of my
maternal uncles called uncle Hassan al-Khalali who asked directly: “what is all
this fuss and war about?”… the answer was: “it is a reaction to the nationalization
of the Suez Canal, uncle Hassan”… uncle Hassan’s mind wandered for a little
then said: “what is this canal?”... he said the word canal as we do in our
local dialect… then continued: “instead of all this fuss and war, let them come
and take one of the so many canals we have at ash-Shawadliya”.
Uncle Hassan
was like so many others in our village and the neighboring ones who go to the
village of Shabratna; home to ash-Shazli family which includes Pashas,
Beys, military leaders and possesses vast areas of agriculture land penetrated
by unlimited number of irrigation water canals… the man thought that the Suez
Canal would not be much different to the small irrigation canals found in those
fields.
I remembered
this story when I heard that one saying that his mother’s washtub is bigger
than the New Suez Canal… however, there is a huge difference between uncle
Hassan and that muslim brotherhood member Wagdi Ghoniem… as the former said
what he said out of the good intention and kindness of the countryside people
and their nobility… but the latter said what he said not realizing or I guess
he knew that he would bring curses to his poor mother whose bad luck made her give
birth to this creature as what was written and published over “his mother’s washtub”
was unutterable enough that it cannot be published in a respected daily
newspaper!
Translated into
English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article
was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper on September 1, 2015.
To see the
original article, go to:
#almasry_alyoum
#ahmed_elgammal #interior_ministry #civil_status_organization
