Gas-exporting countries, including Egypt, have agreed to set up a forum, with its secretariat in Saint Petersburg (Russia). This city has a story with 100 meanings and it is worth telling. In old Russia, there was a man called Peter the Great, who ruled as tsar until his death in 1725 at the age of 53. Before dying, he decided that his country would be strong forever, both under his Tsardom, the Communist rule with Lenin and Stalin, and Putin nowadays. In all these three cases, Russia has been as strong as possible because the man who founded it had a vision for his country as well as a dream and some imagination. At Peter the Great's time, Russia was controlled by the Church, which was pulling the country backwards by imposing a closed mentality on the people while Europe had got rid of the Church's grip and all those who mixed religion with politics and right with wrong (something which all countries should do). Peter the Great wanted to catch up with and outdo Europe. His imagination always got him to make a confrontation between his country and the rest of Europe. At a certain time, he decided to set off on a journey around Europe away from people's eyes. In Vienna (Austria), for instance, he was staggered by the city's music and architecture and decided to bring them to his country. Once in Amsterdam (Holland), he learnt that the city was originally a group of marshes which were later covered and then built on. Amsterdam at the time was a strong city and had a fleet with 4,000 ships, while Russia had no single ship. Moving from one country to another, Peter inevitably compared his Russia with the countries at the peak of civilization. When he went back to Russia, his imagination prompted him to give his land a share of what he had seen in his unique and famous trip. He immediately decided to set up Saint Petersburg in its current location. The spot at the time was full of marshes, as if he wanted to make a challenge and erect his city in a location similar to the one on which Amsterdam had been built. On the walls of the city, he engraved that kind of art that he had seen and been fascinated by in Vienna. While he was setting the foundations of Saint Petersburg, he was doing the same in every inch of his land, so much so that he fused the bells of churches to turn them into cannons. He gave his son two options: either with him and his strong civil state or within the backward Church; no third option. Behind this man's great achievement was one single 11-letter word: "imagination". When Peter the Great died, he left Russia as strong as it appears today. This Russian Tsar is not a unique example, as others came after him in other countries who had similar imagination and founded country with strong bases. Among them was Mohamed Ali Pasha in Egypt at the beginning of the 19th century, one of his successors Ismail at the half of the 1800s, Mahatir Muhammad in Malaysia from 1980 to 2005, etc. Of course, Peter the Great's achievement came at a cost of thousands of victims, as well. However, what was left was strong and has stayed and those victims were not like those among us who are dying from hepatitis or other diseases for nothing. Peter the Great knew what to do. He was a hero of Russia's openness to the world. He was very much aware that cities and countries are not just steel and cement on the ground, but that they indeed have a soul. But where is Egypt's one gone now?
