Every newspaper has editors who review the editorial content before publication. And at Al-Hayat, we make an extra effort to review numbers and figures. We noticed that despite the fact that technology has made many strides, computers still sometimes distort numbers when converting from English to Arabic or vice versa (the Western numbers are officially called ‘Arab numbers' because they took them from us, and the numbers we use are also Arab and their shape has changed over the centuries, but the origin remains the same). I say Arab and English just to make it easier for the reader to understand the subject, as there has been an error in my article on Egypt published on the sixth of this month. I received many comments as a result, the most recent of which was two days ago. However, I will select from these what colleague Mahmoud Shnashen sent to me. He is the deputy managing editor of al-Boursa newspaper in Egypt, and he said: “I know and appreciate your eagerness to check the accuracy of the information contained in your writings. However, your article entitled “Nothing is without a price” on Monday contained major errors in the figures and numbers it listed.” However, the majority of the numbers had been written backwards because of some kind of a mistake in the electronic formatting of the editorial, such as the growth rates that were published, which should be corrected to 7.2 percent, and this applies to all the figures on economic growth mentioned in the piece... I pause here to say that I would have preferred to publish Shnashen's whole letter, but I fear that the electronic error may be repeated in reversing the numbers, and so I will cite one figure to explain the matter: I had written 9.1 and it was published as 1.9. I sent to Mahmoud the handwritten version of my article, and along with it the article typed at my office before it was sent to the printing department. I had corrected it myself out of concern that the numbers may be distorted, and all the numbers were thus correct. Then some of these numbers were distorted by the final electronic formatting. All I say here is that even the most careful can be caught unawares. I had handed over my material to the printing department at Al-Hayat, and the colleagues there promised to establish a system that would prevent the numbers from being distorted when converting between Arabic and English, and so I hope they will succeed. From the problem with the numbers to the problems with the readers, I excuse them as we in Lebanon say “fire only burns the place in which it rages”. For this reason, Yemenis want me to write about Yemen, Syrians about Syria, Libyans about Libya, Sudanese about Sudan, Iraqis about Iraq, and so forth… I do try, but the Arab uprisings should have erupted successively, moving from country to country. However, they erupted altogether at once, and it is not possible for me to clone myself and be present in every country where the people have risen against the government or vice versa. Further, someone like me is not rare or precious enough to burden the nation with clones of myself. I appreciate the problem of every citizen with his own country, but protest requests by readers for my conscience to awaken, meaning that it is in a slumber, when my conscience has chronic insomnia. I also protest even more vehemently that a reader attack the regime in his country with obscene language and accuse it of all sins, then asks me to do the same, even when the reader often writes a letter without a name or address, and then wants me to be martyred on his behalf, and to harm Al-Hayat's correspondents in the country in question, and the whole newspaper. But at least, the readers agree with me on Israel, which is run by a criminal fascist government that is impossible to make peace with. Nevertheless, I often receive letters from Israelis or Jews who read my articles translated into English, and who defend Israel and find excuses for it while refusing to notice its racism. I wrote more than once about the racist Israeli laws that were passed or that are being studied by the Knesset committees. I recently met with Dr. Ahmed Tibi, a member of the Knesset, in London, and went with him over the information I have and sought his opinion, and he gave me a new example of this racism: The Member of Knesset Anastasia Michaeli, who represents the immigrants' party Yisrael Beiteinu, and who is a Ukrainian Christian who converted to Judaism because there was more money in it, asked the Knesset to ban the Muslim call for prayer in the Palestinian villages and towns where Jews live so as not to ‘disturb them'. But Brother Ahmed Tibi responded to this by asking for the trumpet to be banned, and for Jewish wood-burning or barbecue on the Jewish feast of Lag Ba'Omer to be banned because the noise and the smell disturbed the Muslims. As a result, the Knesset shelved the racist proposal. Finally, I thank every reader for his interest in commenting on what I write, even if this led to a fierce war between us for our difference in opinion. I also especially thank the women readers who are unmatched in their wit and humor. The reader Alia from Egypt, for example, offers sublime political analyses, and her letters enjoy the level of those of a professional political writer. This is while I believe that the readers Aziza from Saudi Arabia and Sara from Kuwait must be academicians. They are both intelligent and funny, and I wish Arab comedians had half or even a quarter of their sense of humor and wit. [email protected]
