I was very happy that Maadi's district officials responded to what I published here, more than once, of residents complaining about the disappearance of pavements where they would wake up in the morning to discover they have been fenced into some houses in the immediate vicinity. Statements spread of officials cooperating with pavement thieves, especially after repeated complaints, without interference from district officials. However those statements were proved false and the neighborhood suddenly went back to reinstall pedestrian sidewalks again. But it ignored the list of complaints published here, which included about a hundred cases gathered by the people themselves and went to other places no doubt, like some commercial coffee shops on Road 9, which stretched out on part of the pavement outside the cafeteria, just like all the cafes in the world, but did not impede pedestrian traffic in any way.
These coffee shops made the place look nice with their high level of elegance, and has become an outlet for most people year round, from spring until autumn, just as they outlines the Champs Elysees coffee shops, the French capital sidewalks, cafes, and also outline the Italian Via Fineto sidewalks.
But suddenly neighborhood officials jumped onto these cafeterias, which collected a lot of young people and rather than go to the owners of villas and buildings, who took over the sidewalks adjacent to their property, they focused on street trade and forced the coffee shops to raise their chairs and umbrellas, which adorned the pavement, and forced customers to go inside the closed doors of the coffee shops, as if imprisoned. Other sidewalks which we mentioned lie within the personal properties of some people, who negotiated with district officials, which coffee shop owners did not do.
I saw a group of young people come to one of these coffee shops bringing with them study books to review their lessons in the open air, under the umbrellas placed in front of the beautiful coffee shops. They were surprised by officials who ordered them to evacuate the sidewalks instantaneously, otherwise they would be hurt, and I wish the officials did the same thing with those who built walls surrounding the sidewalks, and with the same rare vigor. They were ordered to vacate instantaneously, rather than annoy neighborhood officials by trespassing on their entertainment seating. Perhaps the reason for this is that the chairs and umbrellas may be lifted immediately without great difficulty, but the walls that swallowed the pavements are not easy to demolish now, or else district officials would get hurt. They would have to return all the ex-gratia payments to their owners, and if demolition of the walls was difficult, the return of ex gratia payments is even more difficult ... What to do? We have guided ordnance officials with their ingenuity that annoying neighborhood officials may be the best way, so that they would stop complaining day and night, of the change of their wealthy neighborhood. Maadi residents complained to the Governor, the Prime Minister, and to the President of the Republic, and this is inappropriate, and shouldn't happen under any circumstances. Therefore they should have been punished, first by the demolition of the elegant coffee shops they frequent, and then to leave piles of garbage on the remaining pavements, with the result that the district had seen increasing piles of garbage every day, in an unsightly scene. The list of abuses which I published is still the same, and will soon be followed by another one prepared by the residents of Maadi of piles of rubbish which have become a fixed reality and a feature of the neighborhood. If you get a visitor, you can easily describe the way to your house by saying turn right at the first trash pile and left on the second and my place is at the third pile of trash where avian and swine flu reside! And you are heading towards a deadly plague …God willing.
