Egypt Traveler 2: The Social Stratification of the Egyptians
The following article is from Lu Kewen's studio by Lu Kewen
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Now that we've talked about Egyptian incomes and prices, let's talk about the social stratification of Egyptians.
The Chinese Egyptians first told me a real example.
Not long ago in Cairo, a wealthy Egyptian they knew killed a pair of civilian mothers and daughters, and was mainly responsible for the death of a traffic accident, and in China they usually go to prison for less than three years, but in Egypt it can be resolved through negotiation, and in the end the rich family is only out
12
10,000 Egyptian pounds, that is
1.33
10,000 yuan, and the victim's family will be forgiven.
My friend said that firstly, the poor Egyptians were accustomed to the fact that their lives were worthless, and secondly, they had their own values, believing that everything that happened was the will of Allah, and that the mother and daughter had been summoned by Allah to heaven.
In Egypt, there is a huge gap between the common and the rich, a gap that the Chinese cannot understand.
Egypt has free health care and free education like India, but it's also the same as India, it's just for show.
In terms of free education, Egyptian public schools cost little money from primary school to university (
2015
When I was in elementary school, I was only one year in elementary school
50
Egyptian pound), but the quality of education is extremely poor except for some famous public schools, such as Cairo University and Al-Azhar University, teaching homework is perfunctory, going to school at 8 o'clock in the morning and leaving school at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and the worst public primary schools, even only two classes a week, teachers and students mix together.
The teaching quality of ordinary public undergraduates in Egypt is at most on par with Chinese junior colleges, or even inferior to Chinese junior colleges.
Attending a public school is the same as herding sheep, but if the family has some conditions, the children are sent to private schools.
Private schools in Egypt are called international schools, which are much more expensive than public schools
2-3
10,000 yuan a year, a little better
5-6
10,000 yuan a year, the most expensive
2
10,000 US dollars a year, and people only receive US dollars.
Public health care is very bad, Chinese friends in Egypt said that they go to private hospitals for treatment when they are sick, and going to public hospitals is no different from waiting for death.
The level of doctors in public hospitals is also very poor, and they are all medical students who have just graduated from the clinic, and after brushing up their experience points, they will switch jobs to make money in the private sector.
Free medical care and free education are actually similar in all countries in the world, because they can't afford to pay the high cost, public schools and hospitals are a mess, and in the end they have become perfunctory welfare facilities for the people at the bottom, and it is better than nothing.
If you compare it, you will find that China's public education and medical care are now doing quite well, at least good teachers and good doctors are still in public schools and hospitals, and they are cheap to study and reimbursed by medical insurance, unlike foreign countries, where almost all good teachers and good doctors go to private schools, only for the rich, not for the common people.
Chinese friends said that among the universities in Egypt, the public Cairo University, Al-Azhar University, and Ain Shams University can reach China
985
level, but it is not as good as the private American University of Cairo, the German University of Cairo, and so on.
I said, wait, are they so simple and rude in their names? Directly American universities, German universities, are there British universities, French universities?
Friends say yes, it's so simple and rude, the children of the rich are sent to these universities, the rich in Egypt have dual citizenship, and most of the assets have already been transferred to European countries, and their children are also cultivated according to European standards, and the elites at the upper level, they are usually used to speaking English and French, and they don't like to speak Arabic, and only when they communicate with the common people, they speak Arabic, and these people are proud to speak English.
I said yes, according to my experience, the elites in the developing countries of the world are all like birds, they all have dual nationality, they all transfer their property to Europe and the United States, they all regard their home countries as a place to make money, they are the ruling class in their home countries, and they regard the developed countries of Europe and the United States as a place of enjoyment. In order to ensure that the privileges are passed on from generation to generation, they use education and medical care to lock up the upward channel of the class, and then monopolize the most profitable industries, making it difficult for the common class to get ahead.
Egypt has seven or eight large families, including the family of former President Hosni Mubarak, who stand at the top of the country's food chain, most notably Najib (
Naguib
Family, owned
160
$100 million in assets, the last lover of Princess Diana of the United Kingdom was a member of the Najib family - Diana and many of her lovers, I personally suspect that they were killed by the British royal family, Diana's car accident should be the masterpiece of the British royal family, and her first bodyguard lover Barry also died in a car accident after the relationship between the two was discovered.
The second most famous is Mansour (
Mansour
The family is one of the world's largest distributors of General Motors, a Caterpillar partner, and also operates McDonald's and venture capital businesses, owned by Mohammed Mansour
30
A net worth of 100 million dollars.
I have introduced in "The Logic of Britain" before, the rich people in the world love to run to London, and these rich people in Egypt basically live in London, as a place colonized by the British, the magnates in these places always have a special feeling for the British, they settle in London, hand over the assets to the British to take care of, learn the way the British speak and the management model, Britain is their real spiritual mother country, they are the magnates in Egypt, but in the eyes of the British, they are another form of the coated class.
In addition to the seven or eight big families at the top of the food chain, there are dozens of other small families in Egypt, each monopolizing different interests, but they have one thing in common, that is, most of them have a military background, and without a military background, it is difficult to expand the industry in Egypt.
The elites controlled the middle and upper echelons of Egypt, leaving an organizational void at the bottom, and eventually the Muslim Brotherhood was embraced and strengthened at the bottom of Egypt.
We'll talk about the Muslim Brotherhood later, but let's move on to the social structure of Egypt.
The elite class and the common class in Egypt have not been in contact since birth, and they are two parallel lines that do not intersect - in fact, most of the world - They all study in different schools from kindergarten to high school, and they may be in the same school when they go to college, but when the school starts, the students will be very candid about their family background, where they live, whether their parents are slum fruit sellers or dentists, lawyers or parliamentarians, no one lies about this, after everyone understands their respective origins, the children of the powerful will play with the children of the powerful, the children of the commoners will play with the children of the commoners, and the different circles will not get together with each other.
After graduation, Egyptian students should fill in their home address when looking for a job, and people from different walks of life in Egypt have a fixed residence, whether they are college students from slums or the eldest young master of the elite class, as long as you look at the address, the address will directly determine whether the recruiting company hires you or not.
A Chinese friend in Egypt said that when he was doing business with an Egyptian of the elite class, the other party met for the first time, and came up to report the family tree directly, saying that his father was the former mayor of so-and-so, his grandfather was the speaker of so-and-so, and the eldest brother worked in an important department
TNND
It's all true, so frank that it makes it difficult for Chinese to adapt for a while.
After I heard this story, I was stunned for two or three seconds, and I said:
Isn't this the unbridled power and money?
If this were China, how could the three generations of officials and the three generations of the rich dare to meet strangers for the first time and speak so nakedly? They would have to be familiar with it before they dared to say it, or if the information was exposed to the public, the Internet would certainly be full of scolding.
The children of the Egyptian magnates must have never been hammered in ordinary times to dare to be so unscrupulous.
The chances of getting ahead are extremely low for the children of poor families in Egypt, and most of the children of poor families begin to accept their fate after they are sensible, especially the residents of the City of the Dead.
2024
year
2
moon
8
The next day, my guide and I drove to the city of the dead in Cairo to interview Mohammed's mother and son, who lived there.
The City of the Dead is located in the center of Cairo, with a total of six square kilometers and is inhabited about
50-100
10,000 people, the specific number is difficult to count.
Because of the dry climate in this area, the corpses are not easy to decay, and Islamic books say that the Tree of Heaven grows on Mount Muktam, and Egyptian dignitaries chose to bury them here, forming a cemetery complex.
According to Egyptian tradition, mourners have to live with the deceased for 40 days, and some houses for the living have been built next to the mausoleum, these houses were originally only for tomb keepers to live in, to prevent tomb thieves from stealing, after entering modern times, Egyptian migrant workers went to Cairo to work, because they could not afford to pay the rent, at a very cheap price, a large number of rented small houses next to the mausoleum.
Muhammad said yes
1950
After Nasser came to power, he suppressed the peasants and made them pay more taxes, and many peasant rebellions in the Nile Delta were suppressed, and after the suppression, they were homeless and ended up living in the graves of the living dead, and the Egyptian government has been oppressing them and preventing them from speaking, and their families have been living in fear.
But I looked it up.
1950
When Nasser came to power, he carried out land reforms, restricting land ownership and distributing excess land to peasants, and Nasser did not target ordinary peasants, but the landlord class, and Muhammad's family was suppressed only when they were supposed to be landlords.
The City of the Dead is supposed to be "the landlords who lived on the streets after the repression, plus some extremely poor homeless people and criminals, brought together to form a super-large slum".
The place where Muhammad's mother and son lived was the mausoleum of an important concubine, and inside was a large courtyard with three or four cats, seven or eight dogs, and a few large trees for shade
HOUSE
, it seems far less tragic than it says on the Internet.
Muhammad said that he lived here, and the advantage was that he only had to pay it every month
200
Egyptian pound (
22
Yuan) to the government, the disadvantage is that he finished college, can speak English, and when he goes out to look for a job, as long as he sees that his address is the city of the dead, various companies do not want him, saying that the people in the city of the dead are closely related to poverty, crime, and dirty, and dare not recruit them.
He now only works in a print shop, earning only a month
2500
Egyptian pound (
277
yuan), his sister works as a nurse outside, and she only earns
4000
Egyptian pound (
444
RMB).
When Muhammad's university professor advised him to move out of the City of the Dead and live elsewhere to avoid discrimination, Muhammad said that he could not afford to leave the City of the Dead, so he had to live here in spite of his life.
I said to Muhammad, "You have a good place to live, do you all live in such a big mausoleum? This courtyard is so spacious."
......
Muhammad said that their ancestors were also wide, so the mausoleum allocated by the government was much better, and he could take me to see how the ordinary residents of the city of the dead lived, but he was not allowed to take pictures.
I nodded in agreement, got up with my notebook in my hand, and walked out of the mausoleum with Muhammad, and crossed two streets to a low dwelling, which was also a mausoleum, but built like a bungalow, and looked nothing special from the outside.
Muhammad stepped forward and knocked on the door, and when the door opened, I suddenly saw dozens of flies rushing out of the door, which frightened my whole body and made me take a step back. When I looked carefully into the house, I saw three children walking barefoot on the ground, and there was a woman in her thirties and an elderly couple, the woman was supposed to be the mother of the child, and the old man was paralyzed in a wheelchair and could not stand up.
The house is about 20 square meters, and it is divided into three rooms, with very poor lighting, a simple small dining table against the earthen wall, and dozens of flies flying up and down in the dense atmosphere.
Muhammad communicated with them for a while, saying that he wanted to show us the ancient mausoleum, and the other party was very enthusiastic, and the guide and I followed Muhammad into the house, and the old man waved his hand at us in a wheelchair to say hello, and we quickly responded.
There was a smell of urine in the room, with a bedroom on the left and a dark kitchen on the right, and three dirty Egyptian children looked us up and down curiously.
We walked quickly through the room to the backyard and saw that it was a high flat field, and Muhammad said that there was a mediocre piece of earth buried in the ground of the ancient Egyptian nobles, and that there was nothing to see, so we put on a serious archaeological show and gave it to the family
200
The Egyptian pound thanked him and quickly evacuated the scene.
After leaving the house, I asked Muhammad why his children had no father, and Muhammad said that his father did not know where to go, and suddenly disappeared and never came home.
I said, how did their family survive? Muhammad said that they were poor households and could eat alms, every child every month
500
Egyptian pound relief, three children is
1500
Egyptian pound (
166
yuan), their family of six, just rely on this
1500
The Egyptian pound survived.
After coming out of the City of the Dead, I told my guide that I had never seen such a miserable family in China, and that after the depreciation of the Egyptian pound, the Egyptians at the bottom were really miserable.
My guide in Cairo was fluent in Arabic, and he was originally from a prestigious university and a large company in China, and he was extremely familiar with Egypt, so he was very indifferent to all this.
He said, do you know why in a developing country like Egypt, the people don't have much money, and the people live so happily every day?
I said why?
He said: We East Asians live anxiously because we still have hope, and we are anxious to catch the train of wealth distribution, and we are very afraid that we will be left behind. And in developing countries like Egypt, they live so happily every day because they know that they were born poor, they will be poor in this life, and they will never be able to rise in class, so they just be happy like this, and live one day at a time.
In the end, he concluded:
Chinese always say that they are optimistic, but in fact, they are just poor and happy, and there is no hope in life to be like this, and there is nothing to envy.
(This article only represents the author's point of view and does not represent the position of this number)