Tag Archives: Hussein Omar

So this is a story with an edge and with a side that I am ill suited to respond to. Yet, when I saw the Guardian with ‘Megacities in the desert: the human cost of Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s bold new projects’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/11/egypt-saudi-arabia-megacity-human-cost) I just had to respond. You see, we might give weight to “In their rush to claim the future and concrete over the past, these vast rebrands are demolishing people’s homes and their heritage” but did anyone remember the people and the heritage demolished around London, around Paris, Im most of the United States, parts of Canada, massive parts of Australia and we could go on for a long time to come. How much consideration were they given? So now as Saudi Arabia is pushing borders in unimaginable directions, now we complain? Go whine me a river (pretty please).

And when we consider the amount of people who ‘lose’ a part in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which I am happy to consider is true. Let’s put them against lists of people in the UK, France and the United States, who had to give it up for progress. There is also a chance that Japan unsettled scores of people building through their industrial age, so that list might dwarf the events in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to almost nothing, almost I said. When you consider that NEOM and the Line are projects never undertaken ever before. When you consider that NEOM will be 22 times the size of New York, making it the biggest city on the planet. We need to consider that this has never been done before and it dwarves the achievements of the USA, Russia and china to several degrees. Yet, the Guardian gives us “Hussein Omar’s mother, as well as some eight generations of his family, are buried there, and he hoped one day to lie next to them. He tells me that for years his family has been in deadlock with the state over what rights they have to visit, but that has now escalated, as the graves themselves have come under threat of removal” As such one source gave me the 10 Cemeteries that were relocated to make way for human progress. So how much thought did the Guardian give for these events? How many in the UK, how many in France. You get the idea. And the fact that Saudi Arabia has 36 million souls (living), the UK has 68 million souls (sort of living) and in this case Saudi Arabia is (roughly) 782% larger. As such, how many people are really being ‘dislocated’ and how many were dislocated when the UK decided to put in the train tracks, the subways and we can go on a little while longer. The same could be said for France and a lot can be said against the US who made a whole lot of native Americans extinct in the name of progress. 

Progress has been the handle to use by many, as such it will be handled by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well. But who is giving us a clear top-line of numbers and areas as each nation is affected, yet we do not get that will we? It pushes the story of Hussein Omar and its writer Nesrine Malik in a different category. I am not stating that the story is wrong, or should not be given, but should we not get the real picture? Should we not get the real impact and optionally the amount of jobs created, the amount of economy served to better the setting for that nation? Just a question, feel free to give it a swing to your own liking. I am merely trying to keep it real, did I succeed?

Have a great day.