the rubbish: “People didn’t used to have plastic bags. They still behave as though rubbish were going to decompose. Artificial fertilizers and pesticides are great, but you have to teach people how to use them. Here you’ve got one ministry engineer per five hundred farmers, and the engineers are pricks who look down on the farmers.” Peasants or farmers? These are small and simple people.
“This is what’s going wrong.” Roland pointed to a blocked irrigation canal. “Farmers dump their rubbish and pesticides. There are increasing numbers of bloody conflicts over stolen water, and the civil servants are too lazy or corrupt to intervene.” He outlined the solution: If the farmers were to set up water boards, as the Dutch had done centuries before in their polders, these water boards could help farmers do their own
irrigation, maintain their canals, raise awareness, and resolve conflicts.
Roland’s people had run a trial of this idea, and it had been a success. Roland got out of the car, walked over to two farmers, and proudly asked one of them what happened now if a Fayumi was caught stealing water. “We smash his face in!” they said. The farmers did what all Egyptians do after a joke—they shook hands. “But afterwards we call an emergency meeting of the board,” the older farmer said. “On behalf of the Egyptian people, I’d like to thank the Dutch for their help,” he said, now with disarming solemnity. “There are fewer stabbings now, and I have much more harvest.”
We said goodbye, and I showered Roland in compliments. I had my success story—who said that development aid was a waste of time? Roland smiled. But, a few weeks after my rather celebratory article was published, one of his colleagues, well-oiled at the time, told me the real story. The idea behind development aid is to render Western specialists unnecessary, as quickly as possible. People have to do it themselves. So the Dutch water managers had pushed on to the next step: Give the water boards rights, hold elections for the board, give the board an advisory council, and raise contributions for the employees. But these would be directors chosen and paid for by the farmers themselves, wouldn’t they? That wasn’t the intention, the ministries of construction and irrigation in Cairo let it be known; power should stay with them. The water boards were condemned to fail.
S o I wrote some things that later turned out not to be true, and the opposite occurred, too. On one occasion, a Dutch diplomat put me in contact with a Syrian MP, Riad Sef. His
brother and son had been murdered by the regime, she said, and his sports shoe factory had been destroyed. “If you want patriotism, go to Riad Sef,” she added. “He could easily seek political asylum with us, but he’s staying here. And he dares to test the limits.”
When I called him, I could go round at once, whereupon Sef shook my hand and burst out with, “Everything, everything, everything but everything here is lies. And these lies persist because the government controls everything—your daily bread, your career, your idea of the world. Did you know that you weren’t allowed to own a fax machine here until recently, or satellite dishes, or foreign currency?” Sef lit up another cigarette, and explained that he was one of the few MPs who hadn’t got his seat through a fixed election run by the regime. “Perhaps they thought I’d back down, and it was hard to get around me. I stood for election in the Damascus district, a lot of people know me, and no one would have believed it if I hadn’t won a seat. What’s more, if there’s Western criticism, the regime can always point at me and say, look, we do have opposition.”
I stopped and shook my writing hand, which had gone numb; I could hardly keep up with Sef. “Votes in parliament are fixed in advance,” Sef explained. “Just like the agenda and the speeches. A typical address begins with something like,
“This is what’s going wrong.” Roland pointed to a blocked irrigation canal. “Farmers dump their rubbish and pesticides. There are increasing numbers of bloody conflicts over stolen water, and the civil servants are too lazy or corrupt to intervene.” He outlined the solution: If the farmers were to set up water boards, as the Dutch had done centuries before in their polders, these water boards could help farmers do their own
irrigation, maintain their canals, raise awareness, and resolve conflicts.
Roland’s people had run a trial of this idea, and it had been a success. Roland got out of the car, walked over to two farmers, and proudly asked one of them what happened now if a Fayumi was caught stealing water. “We smash his face in!” they said. The farmers did what all Egyptians do after a joke—they shook hands. “But afterwards we call an emergency meeting of the board,” the older farmer said. “On behalf of the Egyptian people, I’d like to thank the Dutch for their help,” he said, now with disarming solemnity. “There are fewer stabbings now, and I have much more harvest.”
We said goodbye, and I showered Roland in compliments. I had my success story—who said that development aid was a waste of time? Roland smiled. But, a few weeks after my rather celebratory article was published, one of his colleagues, well-oiled at the time, told me the real story. The idea behind development aid is to render Western specialists unnecessary, as quickly as possible. People have to do it themselves. So the Dutch water managers had pushed on to the next step: Give the water boards rights, hold elections for the board, give the board an advisory council, and raise contributions for the employees. But these would be directors chosen and paid for by the farmers themselves, wouldn’t they? That wasn’t the intention, the ministries of construction and irrigation in Cairo let it be known; power should stay with them. The water boards were condemned to fail.
S o I wrote some things that later turned out not to be true, and the opposite occurred, too. On one occasion, a Dutch diplomat put me in contact with a Syrian MP, Riad Sef. His
brother and son had been murdered by the regime, she said, and his sports shoe factory had been destroyed. “If you want patriotism, go to Riad Sef,” she added. “He could easily seek political asylum with us, but he’s staying here. And he dares to test the limits.”
When I called him, I could go round at once, whereupon Sef shook my hand and burst out with, “Everything, everything, everything but everything here is lies. And these lies persist because the government controls everything—your daily bread, your career, your idea of the world. Did you know that you weren’t allowed to own a fax machine here until recently, or satellite dishes, or foreign currency?” Sef lit up another cigarette, and explained that he was one of the few MPs who hadn’t got his seat through a fixed election run by the regime. “Perhaps they thought I’d back down, and it was hard to get around me. I stood for election in the Damascus district, a lot of people know me, and no one would have believed it if I hadn’t won a seat. What’s more, if there’s Western criticism, the regime can always point at me and say, look, we do have opposition.”
I stopped and shook my writing hand, which had gone numb; I could hardly keep up with Sef. “Votes in parliament are fixed in advance,” Sef explained. “Just like the agenda and the speeches. A typical address begins with something like,
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