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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Allo?
By Fayza Hassan
Someone once told me that great gains are generally followed by great losses, and I readily subscribe to the principle. This time was no exception to the rule. I recently bought a state-of-the-art PC, but as Mr George (salesman, technician and all-purpose wizard), having painstakingly secured its vital connections, was leaving the apartment, my new purchase developed a strange ailment. Logging on for the first time, I managed to generate only excessive static, coughing and spluttering. My impulse was to point the finger at the smart, "improved" modem. It had to go, I decided. Mr George, however, was off to Aswan for a week, and my only option was to forsake any web-related activities and disconnect the multi-talented, much-advertised little box until his return.
The next morning, unable to let go without a fight, I gave the device another chance, in the hope that its teething period may have run its course during the night. Instead of the gentle ringing sound that Mr George had drawn out of the gadget the previous evening, it immediately responded to my prodding with an angry, horrid screech, while a message flashed on the screen advising me to check my telephone connection.
It appeared now that the modem may be suffering from a mysterious albeit terminal illness, rather than just normal growing pains. My daughter observed my attempts at logging on and offered to give it a try. "Don't pop a blood vessel, but something's very wrong," she finally ventured timidly, after trying some secret tricks of the trade. Seeing that I was taking the news standing up, she added more firmly: "Don't use it until Mr George comes back," and left the room. Obviously, no more help was coming from this quarter.
An hour later I discovered the cause of the trouble, or at least another symptom. My telephone receiver, when lifted off the hook, also wheezed like a chest full of phlegm. Grabbing my cell phone, I called the telephone exchange.
I spent the next three hours either getting busy signals or talking to rude employees who, having barely given me time to explain, barked or whined, according to their disposition, that my problem was not their business. Some advised me to call another number and hung up quickly in the hope that I had not had enough time to write it down. Desperate, I dialled at random one of the dozen combinations I had collected thus far and was finally rewarded with a snarling voice informing me that I had not paid my international bill. They had therefore cut off my telephone line. At this point, it was a relief just to know what the problem was. There was light, however faint, at the end of the tunnel.
I hastened to repair the oversight and was assured that the line would be restored in the following couple of hours. Two days later, I was still spending many expensive cell-hours inquiring why, since I now had a receipt to prove due payment of my international bill, they had not kept their promise. The answers varied from "but your line is in order," to "are you sure you paid?" peppered with questions about the number I was calling from since I did not have a line, and a few comments hinting at the insurmountable difficulty of effecting the necessary repairs.
I was also advised to take my complaint to any or all of the Maadi, Bassatin, Dar Al-Salam and Qattamiya exchanges, then go to the Ramses Street head office for good measure. The buck kept being passed from one employee to the next, while I remained without a telephone. Using my new PC was no longer the issue. I just wanted my line back.
I lost my appetite and slept fitfully, leaving my bed ten times a night to listen to the gurgling noises coming from the receiver. On several occasions, I abused the voice delivering recorded messages, deriving a childish pleasure from my outbursts. Finally, exhausted in the wee hours of the morning, I would doze fitfully and dream of the sardonic grins of prim and properly veiled civil servants, scorning me from the vantage point of the temporary power vested in them.
"Don't kill yourself over this incident," my brother-in-law advised. "A few days ago, they cut my international line, which I have used regularly for the past 25 years. They claim I never paid the initial deposit, but cannot explain how and why I was given a 'free' connection for quarter of a century." To secure his peace of mind, he had paid the deposit again and was now waiting patiently for the service to resume. Insha'allah.
Suddenly I was beginning to understand why so many people had become lethally apathetic. Launching the simplest project required so much wasted energy that the wise gave up before even starting. I had visions of a whole nation grinding to a complete standstill, paralysed by the difficulties of simply securing life's basic needs. Dust will soon settle over us, and in thousands of years, archeologists will excavate the site and find the good ladies of the telephone exchange still hunched over pots at their desks, petrified in the act of shelling peas. I spitefully hoped that they would derive the right conclusions as to the state of our affairs in the year 2000.
