Sheri, who is originally from the south of the Kingdom, has for many years made his home in Sweden, one of the northernmost countries of the world. This means that to him Germans are now southerners! It is well known that Sweden is a democratic country that is extremely mindful of human rights. It is also a country where freedom of the press is a top priority. As for the fight against corruption, in Sweden there is little or no corruption to fight! Let me give you an example. The Mayor of Stockholm, who heads a prominent political party, one day stopped her car for refueling at a petrol station on her way to work, (by the way she has no driver!) when she discovered that she'd left her wallet at home. So, she decided to risk her political future and that of her party, and used one of the petrol coupons provided by her political party for official errands. Since that day, there has been quite a row over her use of public money for a “private” purpose. This is despite the fact that she has explained to the media that she had forgotten her wallet and was worried her car might stop in the middle of the road and she would be late for work. This story has led one of our female colleagues to write a column in which she said: “How nice their corruption is”! And she is right because corruption in our country is not considered corruption unless it goes through two stages: The first is to get one billion riyals in cash when signing the contract, and the second is to hand the project to your company which is registered in the name of your sister's husband! But how, you may ask, did Saad Al-Shehri end up living in Sweden? Saad was at one point a victim of bureaucracy and the lack of job opportunities for young people in this country. He could not get accepted in a teachers college except in a small southern coastal town of Qunfudah. He had no source of income to support himself while he lived away from home, so he moved to Abha to be near his family. He borrowed SR500 to buy petrol for his old car to take him to Riyadh to seek help to transfer to a college near his home. There, he did all he could to arrange a meeting with a higher educational official to tell him about his situation. He finally succeeded in doing that. But the official he met wrote the following at the bottom of the letter in which Saad requested to be transferred from Qunfudah to Abha: “To be dealt with according to the rules” – a cliché that is frequently used by officials in our country and which basically means “No”! Saad then decided to drop out of college, went to Makkah, and used his old car as a taxi. There he met a pilgrim from Sweden who was impressed by his good manners, and when he heard Saad's story, he told him he should travel to Sweden and join one of its universities for free since foreigners don't have to pay school fees. Saad liked the idea and traveled to Sweden and was admitted to a Swedish university. He also got a job and married a Swedish Muslim woman. Today, when Saad observes how smoothly the system runs in Sweden and how easy life is there, he feels sad because he wishes that things were like this in his home country. If I were him I wouldn't feel bad at all. Saad should actually find that educational official in Riyadh and thank him for giving him the opportunity to be where he is now. In Sweden of course there are no Hai'a or (religious) activists like Sheikh Yousuf Al-Ahmad! This is because personal freedom in Sweden is highly respected. But, there are activists of a different type, and those are the environmentalists! And since “whoever lives with a people for 40 days becomes one of them”, as the Arab saying goes, Saad has become interested in “environmental activism” and sends me from time to time letters expressing his sadness over the destruction of the environment in Saudi Arabia. Saad warns me about the deadly dangers of pollution coming from our factories. And, since I do not want to cause Saad a shock by telling him about the environmental damage that has been taking place here while he has been away in Sweden, I'll only say to him: “According to the rules”!
