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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Focus Special Travel Sports People Features Living Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The ogre and the giant
By Fayza Hassan
There was once a ferocious ogre who lived in the mountains, served by a large army of lesser ogres. Every now and then, the chief beast would order his cronies to go down to the villages in the environs and bring back hostages and booty. They obeyed him and periodically wreaked havoc among the harmless populations who lived quietly in the surroundings. They killed, maimed, burned and looted with abandon and on their return were rewarded handsomely.
The ogre's acts of destruction went unpunished for the longest of times and, though his victims appealed to the rulers of the world, their calls for help remained unheeded, since they were only poor peasants whose life and death produced no repercussions in international political arenas. When the villagers realised that they were on their own, the men armed themselves with sticks and stones and tried to resist the bands of lesser ogres and their guns. They were not very successful in protecting themselves with such primitive equipment, however, and many of the villages fell to the invaders, who took over their houses and fields and condemned them and their families to destitution and exile. On occasion, when they thought that it would enhance their ratings at the polls, some rulers mentioned the ogre and made disapproving noises at his uncivilised behaviour. Not only did the ogre not care about their opinion, their criticism incited him to step up his campaigns of terror.
Quite unexpectedly, however, one day the ogre's defiant attitude managed to catch the attention of the giant of giants, the benefactor of the world, who had been busy on other fronts but who was just at that very moment searching high and low for some important cause to boost his waning popularity and remind his ungrateful subjects how masterful he was. The giant therefore decided to convey the ogre to an important powwow, attended by several lesser giants of his acquaintance. The ogre was wined and dined lavishly but eventually it was mentioned to him politely that his barbarous activities had to be curtailed or else. The ogre looked at the giants allied against him with clear contempt and stormed out. Back in his lair, he huffed and he puffed and blew yet a larger chunk of the unprotected population away.
Now the giant of giants was left with no choice but to carry out his threat, which is exactly what he had been hoping for. He had been breeding genetically modified birds fed only on choice meat in order to build up their unusual powers and he was eager to prove their deadly efficiency and watch the sun glint off their shiny wings. This trial run was long overdue, he told himself, since his constituents, who had been selling their children into slavery for the maintenance of the creatures, had begun to question their relevance. These birds had been trained to carry huge rocks and drop them on any given location following an order they received via a computer chip inserted in their tiny heads. Now the world would have a chance to witness the giant's unique power machine in action. The giant, rubbing his hands with glee, uttered his war cry and, followed by his willing partners, prepared to do battle against the ogre. "We will bring him to his knees in no time," he boasted. "How long will he be able to resist our might? In a day or two we will smoke him out of his lair."
Soon the birds were flying over the ogre's domain. They dropped their rocks right, left and centre. The ogre showed no signs of being duly impressed, and consequently it began to dawn on a number of lesser giants that the expensive birds might actually be technologically challenged. It began to transpire that the devices in their heads had not been properly weather-proofed, for instance, and that rain, thunder or lightening caused them to suffer terminal confusion. Instead of dropping their rocks on the assigned targets, they hurried back to their nests, sneezing dejectedly. Furthermore, even in fair weather, their finely-tuned decision-making apparatuses failed them dismally, to say nothing of the fact that their aim was not always true. They therefore often made mistakes, dumping their load indiscriminately on the enemy or on the hapless population, which now had to contend with both the ogre's devastating armies and the giant's misguided but relentless efforts to protect what was left of them. Caught in the middle of the senseless battle, they abandoned their villages and fled, many more dying on the way.
Pitted against each other, the ogre and the giant were bent on a course of total destruction. They would only stop when one of them was able to assert his superiority, they proclaimed. The world watched, aghast; it was clear by now that, by the time they had secured their personal triumph, there would be nothing left worth fighting for.
