To All Egyptians

To all you Egyptians who are so proud of your country, you who will not accept the slightest slight against that nation of yours, let me tell you what I think.

You once had a mighty civilisation, the kingdom of the Pharaohs. They gave you the Pyramids, they gave you glorious monuments, they gave you most of your history. So you can be proud of Egypt on that measure.

But can you be proud of Egypt as it is now? Only on the basis that it is a Muslim country. The economy is based on agriculture and tourism. Unlike agriculture, tourism does have high value added, but it seems the revenue is restricted to a few lucky Egyptians. So the standard of living in Egypt is quite low. You do have an abundance of labour, but it is doubtful whether you have an abundance of skilled labour. And those workers who are skilled usually do not find adequate opportunities in Egypt, so the country faces a drainage of skills.

I am told by reliable sources ( people of Egyptian extraction ) that your capital city, Cairo, suffers from overcrowding, and from under-provision of public goods and services.

And I know for a very certain fact that Egypt has no competence in any field of sport compared to most other countries.

Yet I admire my Egyptian friends' defiance in the face of facts, and their refusal to accept that their nation can be anything but a great and modern civilisation.

its called being ''Stubborn''.

visible change

Ehm..sorry I haven't written for so long, Its because I have exams in around two weeks inshallah.

I want to tell you how our school has changed. Radically changed. Last year, it was us school boys who ran the school, in a sense. Corridors were turned into football courts when teachers escaped to the nearest starbucks, and when they were back they wisely fortified themselves behind their locked classroom doors. That isn't quite fair to all of them though, for among them were some daring spirits. Mr Sa'eed, for instance, made some brave forays into the dangerous territory of the school buildings, and even managed to capture a few footballs as bounty. ( sadly for him, he only hung on to them for a few days at most ).

The balance of power was firmly with us boys. It was a well known fact that during most lessons, bandits of boys roamed the school, armed with fire extinguishers. ( maybe to douse misbehaving teachers ).

Its very different now. Teachers deliver long lectures to packed halls, no-one dares reply or object. During break-time the teachers are mobilised into tactical units; two or three patrol the hauntingly empty corridors, while guards stand at the doors to the outside yard, just to make sure we stay in the sun. School really has changed, change as visible as the new headmaster.

unrelated topics

Can someone tell me why the Nobel prize is considered the greatest recognition for achievement ? what makes it superior to other awards ? People place such trust in the judgment of those who award it that they would now perceive the recipient as better in his/her respective field than others.

I think that the more you are ill, the more fondness you develop for being ill. Not fondness in the sense of longing, maybe familiarity is a better word. When you fall ill for the twentieth time, you remember other times; how wonderful it was to miss school for a full week, the nice winter coldness that made you sick in the first place, the doctor that said your vena cava came out in the wrong place ( horrible doctor ), and the lovely feeling of lying down alone and not caring about anything in the world because you're ill.

An epic journey: Riyadh to Makkah

My diary entry on the 18th of September begins with: On the way to Makkah inshallah. I'll leave the diary and describe the journey myself now. As usual, we started off much later than when we intended, at nearer 2:00 am instead of 11:00 pm, and then immediately decided that we needed refreshments for the journey, so stopped no further from our house than the local grocery. Having stockpiled enough junk food to feed an elephant, we then navigated our way onto the Makkah highway and left Riyadh behind.

The air outside was refreshingly cool, and the stars in the sky shone down like distant ceiling lights in a concert. This tranquil night atmosphere in the desert was matched by the peaceful

snoring in our car, and the approaching and fading rumble of cars and trucks as they overtook us. ( as they invariably do ).

It was dawn a few hours later, and we stopped at a service station to pray fajr ( the morning prayer ). ( by the way, I said 'WE' because we were travelling in a two car convoy, us and

Abu Mahdi ). At the end of this article are some photos I took of the place, which could be very picturesque when viewed through the lens of a camera as dishonest as mine.

Resuming our frequently interrupted journey, we followed the highway through rocky desert where the sun had risen and blasted everything with a brilliant light, also turning the road ahead into a perpetual mirage. With the car stuffy and hot, tempers naturally flared, and I had a very mature argument with Khadijah about whether I had chucked a plastic bag of chocolates on her foot directly, or whether I hit the dashboard with it first and then it fell on her foot.

Anyways, we stopped so often on the way there that we only covered 330 km in the first 6 hours, which although a reasonable speed for a sea slug, can hardly be called speeding. Alhamdulillah, we reached Makkah after around 13 hours on the road, the last 1 or 2 hours of which we drove through the large black scenic mountains surrounding Makkah, occasionally silhouetted misty grey in the distance.

Alhamdulillah we made U'mrah, I'm back in Riyadh now, and Eid mubarak everybody.

Here are some of the photos.

not very clean, but at least the tree reflection and sky look nice.

those lumps in the trees are birds' nests.

the light from different sources gave this station quite a special morning look.

these are some of us boys' shadows, thrown by the rising sun.

scenes on the way.

some of the black mountains around Makkah.

not sure what

Its 3 : 25 am. I'm not sure what I'm doing on the blog. Actually I want to write, but no ideas have volunteered themselves yet, that is, good ideas. I used to want to be an economist, then a lawyer, then so many other things, yet we can never know what lies ahead, for that is Allah's knowledge. Strange how people change, hand in hand with circumstances, and so our wants and aspirations change accordingly.

Someone tell me why I'm wrong, but isn't it true that if you're a doctor then you try to make people better, and cure their ailments while they get on with life, and if you're a lawyer you solve their disputes while they get on with life, and a journalist tells us whats happening in other people's lives, and so on. The only three professions where it would seem there is a long term contribution to humanity is a Muslim scholar teaching religion, because this would help us in the Akhirah inshallah, and being a scientific researcher, where you advance human knowledge ( though the results of more advanced knowledge are not entirely positive ), and a teacher where you educate the future generations, for education is the basis for any civilisation.

Allah's mercy

We were having iftar at one of ummi's friends house the other day, and we ( family and other guests ) were walking to the masjid for I'sha and tarawih ( that's the extra salah in Ramadan after I'sha ). Us boys were behind the family, and as we were chatting along the sounds of a car approaching grew very suddenly louder and louder. Barely did we have time to look behind then dash to the pavement and a maniacal GMC thundered past. At the same moment I looked ahead, and there was Nusaibah walking peacefully near the middle of the road. I swear I didn't even have time to scream. The GMC sped towards her, she looked back suddenly and ran into its path, then realising she wouldn't make it across, ran back out of its path. It was very near, very very near. Alhamdulillah, and Allah does these things for a purpose which we may or may not realise. Maybe to bring us back to him, and to show us his power and mercy.

Incubation

Although incubation is generally for eggs, and at the beginning of life, it can also be flexibly used to describe being lazy. eg. a hippo has an unerring inclination towards incubation. so a hippo is lazy. The relationship between incubation and laziness is obvious, but anyway, I feel like I'm undergoing incubation in Ramadan, so thats why I'm not writing too much.

example of incubation