The Coffee Slurpers of Old Nile
From DESMOND STEWART
CAIRO
HE coffee-slurpers of Egypt, her 'multi- tudinous bureaucrats, have a long ancestry. We see them in the frescoes of Sakkara, stout, sedentary scribes, making life difficult for the farmers and workers; we see them today in a thousand offices. They are big-bottomed and doe- eyed. They can cope with two telephones at once; I have seen a master cope with three. When they are kind : 'Bring one extra-sweet,' no need to specify coffee; more often they greet their public with, 'Come tomorrow,' or 'The Bey is in Alexandria.' They are feared, hated and envied. They sit in starling-hordes in the minis- tries; rooms of sagging files represent their accumulated malice. They never run, even to catch their own bus; naturally they do not hurry to solve problems for the public.
The coffee-slurper is the antithesis of the soldier, and the soldiers made the revolution. The coffee-slurpers have never dared to challenge the soldiers; instead, they have flattered them and obstructed their revolution, hoping that their obstruction will grind things back to nor- mal, when perhaps they can use 'Pasha' as well as 'Bey.' (These Turkish titles were abolished nine years ago; but the coffee-slurper still uses them.) The Syrian setback has turned the attention of Nasser and his government towards Egypt. If they can make Arab Socialism work in the Nile Valley, if they can diminish the abyss be- tween rich and poor, if they can ensure justice without influence (in Arabic, wasta), then nothing can prevent their triumph in the rest of the Arab world : those who are now trying to isolate them will themselves be isolated. If the Socialist gains are swallowed up by bureaucratic tyranny, then Arab nationalism will fail too. Nasser realises this. He has pledged himself to carry out a social revolution which will be as successful 1-,s his political one. He admitted in a broadcast : 'Government machinery has failed to give the public the impression that it was at their service.'
Since the beginning of October the press has become vigorously alive. Every day new assaults on the bureaucracy are published. One news- paper pointed out that to get a telephone required no fewer than 182 steps, each one consisting of paper-work. Again, a registered letter had to be recorded twelve times between being sent and delivered, and this required twenty-seven formalities. By reducing the steps to four, paper to an annual value of £E72,000 has been saved. The most savage criticisms refer, naturally, to payment. The bureaucratic machinery, designed to prevent corruption, makes payment of regular sums, such as professors' salaries or broadcasting fees, an arduous and lengthy tussle, the bureau- crat concerned being as reluctant to disburse as if it was his family fortune that was being paid away.
The new wigd is blowing even in Al-Azhar, the millennial Islamic university. A law recently published points out starkly that students from all over Africa come to Cairo for an Azharite degree; in the past, this made them little more than religious parasites; they knew nothing use- ful to supplement their pious intonations. It is now decreed that Azharite, students must study both religion and some useful trade, skill or pro- fession, so that back in Guinea, Nigeria or Zanzibar they can earn their own keep and help their country evolve. With one sweep Islam, started by a Prophet who mended his own clothes, has incorporated the principle of 'worker-priests.'
Unfortunately, modernisation can be as super- ficial as the change from gallabya to lounge suit. The old religious sheikh had dignity and honesty and the manners of a prince; a modernised version can' easily become a spiteful coffee- slurper. An English scholar known to me, de- voted to the. Arabs and living in Cairo on the Government's invitation, was implored by an official of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs to revise the very bad translation of a booklet on Holy War. Most unwilling to tinker with a text in which no idea more recent than the ninth century was evident, he allowed him- self to be persuaded by sugary compliments. His work complete, he asked for the £45 he had been promised. He was fobbed off with £10 and given a badly retyped version of the booklet to revise once more. Having done this, he again asked to be paid. After two weeks his doorman received a typed letter, not in an envelope, pre- faced 'In the Name of God the Most Gracious the Most Merciful,' stating that his English was inaccurate, his sentences clumsy and that 'while had been willing to pay you half the sum appointed for the revision, in the light of your carelessness £10 will represent all you deserve.' My friend's request that this matter be submitted to arbitration went unanswered.
Such experience of rudeness and dishonesty is the common fare of countless victims. What does the victim do? If he is an Egyptian, be (1) assumes that the motive was personal corruption; (2) wastes psychic energy on complaint and anguish; (3) invokes his powerful friends, if he has any; (4) if they are ineffective, and they usually are, he can invoke a lawyer. (1 did this myself, early in 1960, when a book of mine was pirated. The case has come up more than eight times since and each time judgment has been postponed. There is, however, a law of copy- right, signed by Nasser; there is also, I note with interest, a new Minister of Justice.) If the victim despairs of the law's delays, he can write to Nasser himself. This often works miracles. I urged my English friend to do this. But, an admirer of Nasser, he was reluctant to bother him with a trivial matter. Instead he consumes his soul in indignation and will probably leave Egypt.
Can Nasser succeed in his war against the scribes and the coffee-slurpers?
There is no simple solution. Egypt' suffers from unemployment, particularly of arts gradu- ates. To dismiss officials would be to cause great misery. And the new social laws require good bureaucrats.
Yet there are grounds for hope. The man in charge of the operation is Abdul Latif Boghdady. An ex-Air Force officer, he solved, as Minister of Town Planning, a problem whose insolubility had delighted coffee-slurpers for fifty working years : what to do with the unsightly mud-banks of the Nile. In a few months he created a twenty- five-mile Corniche from Helwan to northern Cairo; his hand has made Cairo the beautiful city it is today. Boghdady has now given the em- ployees of the Treasury a month to settle all outstanding cases. This is a brave start. He has also sent a letter to 12,064 officials in the same Ministry telling each personally to remember 'that he holds his post only to serve his country and to help his fellow-citizens to overcome their official difficulties.' The revolutionary nature of this language only appears to those who have witnessed the lordly condescension of the un- checked bureaucrat. He has also forbidden all officials to read newspapers in their offices.
While Boghdady attacks the government routine, Nasser himself is attacking the machin- ery of the National Union, whose failure he has admitted. He wishes to involve workers, farmers, educated people, women and the army in the rebuilding of Egypt. If he can succeed in making of the National Union a genuine forum for critical discussion, he will have solved the basic problem of his country. The gap between them (the rulers) and us (the people) will have been bridged. It is a gap that has existed since the frescoes of Sakkara were made. It accounts for the distrust of the fellahin where all govern- ments are concerned. It accounts for the arro- gance of the bureaucrat: since he belongs to them and has their power to back him. If a social democracy can be built in Egypt, the fear of officialdom may become the mild distaste we feel in England. And the bureaucrat himself may become happier. Idle, newspaper-flicking, hu is underpaid. Perhaps in the future he may learn to hurry; production will increase; and with it his ow n wage.
But if Nasser loses this war, the future of Egypt hardly bears thought.
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