Every Arab country is plagued by the neighboring Arab country, and vice versa, and if an Arab country has two Arab neighbors on its borders then it is plagued by both together. Last month, I proposed that the nation hand over its affairs to women; if they failed to do a better job than the men, then it is at least impossible for them to do a worse job than their spouses. This month, I continue with all the Arabs, and will mix humor with seriousness. It is summer, and political news are scarce, and at any rate, the Arabs have enough worries to begin with, so I will not remind them during the holidays of their countries' problems, or what they had escaped and fled abroad for. Our countries are great, which is more than I can say for their peoples. The traditional Arab, if not the stereotypical Arab, does not think as much as he presumes. He sees everything as a conspiracy against him, but fails to spot the fact that he is the primary conspirator against his personal and national interests, and perhaps in such a manner that there would be no need for others to plot against him. The Arab mind is programmed not to think, and in the rare cases where it does, it makes the worst kind of mistakes possible. If we divide the Arabs into two groups, they would be a group of bribers and a group of bribed, or a group of oppressors and an oppressed group, while both are ignorant. Before I continue, I want to note that there are brilliant exceptions to the above, but they do not involve the majority. While this minority includes enlightened governments and creative citizens, the majority involves undemocratic governments, but still, they may sometimes be better than the populace. I spent my teenage years in a suburb of Beirut. If the reader wants to know how these suburbs looked like in the sixties, all he has to do is visit them now, because nothing has changed since. This is better because any change would have been for the worse. Today, there are Arab cities that would actually look better should they be attacked by a nuclear weapon. In some of our countries, the borders are the best thing. A young man may prefer to venture to swim north to Europe, with the risk of being eaten by sharks, than to stay without a job or the hope for a better future. Some other Arab countries are not countries at all, but limited partnership corporations. Egypt and Lebanon are the two main musical countries of the Arab world, but today, there is no longer any music in them. Nevertheless, a funeral in both countries is probably more jovial than a wedding in many Arab cities. A man from the Gulf wears clothes made in China, shoes made in Turkey, drinks coffee from Brazil, with sugar from India, eats Swiss cheese, sits at a Scandinavian-made table, writes with a French ball pen on papers imported from Eastern Europe, watches a television made in Japan, drives a German or Korean car, and then complains about foreign labor. We also have a class of businessmen who steal other people's money, and then ask whether swallowing dust invalidates their fast. Everybody complains, and everybody is right. Yet, the Egyptian who complains must thank God that he is not in Libya. And the Libyan who complains must say that at least he is not in Sudan. And the Sudanese who complains must thank God twice he is not in Somalia. Some Arab countries have no other purpose than being a cautionary tale, about what countries should not be like. Some Arab leaders make other leaders appear as though each is a Charles de Gaulle. An Arab country was stolen from its natives, a country that hosts the first Qiblah and the third holiest shrine. How many Arabs does it take to liberate the holy land? Nobody knows because the Arabs have not liberated anything for a thousand years. Once again, I know that I am being unfair to the good minority as I talk about the majority, as much as I know that there are some Arab glimpses of light amid the pitch black darkness. However, my excuse in this is that I am writing about myself. I am an Arab, and belong to another minority as I admit to my personal contribution to the overall failure, and do not blame the United States and Israel for it. I am doing nothing but expressing what I mean in a satirical portrayal of the situation, or through humor. However, I am usually serious when I am being humorous, and sugarcoat my opinion so that it may be easily accepted. But there is no joke when we say that education in all of our countries is bad, with the problem being that the things the Arabs need to learn cannot be taught. God changes nothing in the conditions of a people until they first change what is in their hearts. As I mention God, I become hopeful, since I believe that all the Arabs will go to heaven as they have punished themselves enough on earth. [email protected]
