Last Ramadan I was in Paris with my brother Ibrahim, who was going to have critical surgery. I met with the CEO of the American Hospital in Paris who performed the surgery. The meeting ran as follows: Professor: You miss Egypt, don't you? Me: Oh, of course. I'd like to invite you to Cairo. Professor: I'm sorry I can't. Me: I know you are busy, so you have the right to set the time of the visit. Professor: This is not the problem. I'll be frank with you. I visited Cairo only once before, but I couldn't bear staying there even for just a few hours. So I decided to fly anywhere else. I did not have a certain destination in mind. I just wanted to get out of this city. In spite of its archeological and cultural richness, Cairo comes among the first world capitals in terms of pollution and chaos. Suffice it to know that over 80% of the Egyptian patients who come to Paris for treatment are victims of pollution and chaos. You are in bad need for a calm and healthy life otherwise you will turn into sick people! Places leave their prints inside the bodies and brains of people. Cairo seems not to love people. Nor do people love it, it seems. Such enmity leads to alienation. Life is nothing but a healthy body, a lung getting clean air, a stomach digesting clean food, an ear that is not destroyed by noise and an eye seeing green and beautiful things. Unfortunately, Cairo has nothing of that, so why do you want to return may favor with torture and illness? The professor's words were like knifes in my heart. But it is not the end of the world. We can take these words as a key for our problems. Cairo entered the stage of slow death. It lived long decades in intensive care, but no one took care of it till it reached the stage of clinical death. We must now live a life that kills us every minute because we simply do not have the will for a solution. We can neither lift the life-support system nor close our ranks to save it from its pains. Cairo, the capital of 80 million Egyptians, made records in all what is ugly. It has 81 uncharted areas inhabited by eight million souls, which means that slums account for 40% of the capital. Pollution in Cairo is 7-10 fold of the allowed limit in inhabited areas. It is the most polluted city in the world. Please stay calm while reading these statistics: the percentage of lead in the atmosphere in London is 4.4 micrograms/cubic meters; Berlin, 3.8 micrograms; and Cairo 14.9 micrograms. The percentage of Co2 in Cairo is 380 micrograms/cubic meters while the international rate is 200 micrograms, needless to numerate the other ‘achievements' of Cairo, as you know them better than me. It broke the world record in traffic jams, chaos, breaching the law, corruption, bad planning of roads, bridges and tunnels, noise and the unique government silence. Although I live in Cairo willingly, as I love it and know that all of you do, but will this love become an attempt to save this city before it is announced dead? I beseech you not to differentiate between "ordinary citizens" and the "ruling government" to turn this dream into reality. Cairo deserves to forget differences in points of view and to do our best to turn it into a beautiful city. Everything is possible once there is true will. Your ideas as well as steps and initiatives of officials and government bodies will be the starting point. Al-Masry Al-Youm will devote pages for your ideas and initiatives. All of us love Egypt and hope to live in a ‘beautiful' Cairo. I wait for your dreams and ideas.
