I was chatting with my uncle lately, and we drifted to find ourselves talking about the usual dulling subject, how we consider somehow luxurious commodities and services as the basics and bare necessities for our daily life.
What triggered the conversation was a simple accident that happened to me today. I tried to start my laptop but it refused. This was understandable because I left it working for about four days. The weird thing is that I had the worst afternoon, I felt as if I were a handicapped person, a guy with a missing arm or leg. Then a funny thought crossed my mind, I can stand not making a necessary operation on my back for four years now BUT I simply cant stand being disconnected from my machine’s world for two or three hours.
My uncle, gave me a side and-what-would-you-know look, and told me an incident that kept me stranded for the rest of the day. He told me about some old woman in our home town, she was extremely sick and she needed a certain medication that cost about 60 pounds, which is not that expensive for most of us. Till here, this is just a sad story that we hear all the time and reminds us with the fact that there are extremely poor people, ya 7aram, and that is it. Anyhow, someone offered her family 100 pounds to buy the medication, what would her family do? Buy the medication? No. Instead, they bought the old woman’s coffin. They knew that they can’t afford her treatment for so long, so they decided to make sure that she gets a decent burial.
I couldn’t help thinking of some of the simple things I do on monthly basis - I am ashamed to mention those on daily basis - and I consider them, necessities. DSL subscription = 100 pounds, Orbit subscription = 180 pounds, health club subscription = 300 pounds. A total of 580 pounds a month, or should I say 6 coffins a month? And I don’t like - actually can’t imagine – to know how many coffins a Porsche Cayanne can buy?
I am not blaming myself or anyone else for this. It is just that I was stunned, shocked, I felt like a deer in the headlights hearing this story. For a moment I thought this was one of Dickens’ epics, a kind of story that we can cry our eyes out and leave at the end of the show knowing that it is not true, and even if it was, we are safe and sound away from the events. But this wasn’t like this. This was here. This is true. This is cruel.
I always thought I knew the poor people’s life, being admitted to the worst public school in the country, and because I spent 6 years of my adulthood in a working class neighborhood. But today, as I was driving back home through Maadi’s beautiful tree sided streets, I kept asking myself, have I forgotten that the poor, the needy and the homeless do exist? Did I become narrow minded and short sighted that I can’t see these people and can only see what I want, and love, to see from Cairo’s streets?
Have I forgotten?
