A story for the over-sixties – Al-Watan newspaper, Saudi Arabia

There are still those who are worried about the “2030” vision, and he has nothing to do with Awakening except that he wore her dress with wearers, then he liked the dress based on familiarity and habit. Social norms are changing for him, and in this article I will try to address this group with an example in the form of a fairy tale. This segment, no matter how minority it is in relation to the population (only 5%), its attitude towards children and its absorption of changes will save it. (saving face) from stigma (intellectual stagnation and backwardness).

An example is a story from the surreal imagination of a woman over 40 who has several sons and daughters, and after the birth of her last child, she discovered that there is a well for drinking water in her husband’s land, which is an orphan well in her geographical area, and everyone buys water from him at a very high price, due to which she accumulated an amount Kabir forced her to open a large commercial center, the purpose of which was not (trade and investment), as it was a storehouse for the various needs of her children, and the one in charge of the mall was an Asian worker, and the children were preoccupied with the commands of their mother (housewife) who saw that God was enough for them with this well of life and misery in it, so accordingly they have nothing left but the afterlife, so one of of them the imam of the mosque, another a servant in it, and the third a muezzin. for the fourth, he opened a charitable association, made himself its president, and taught his little brother how to wash a dead body. In addition to helping his mother with cooking and washing, he bragged to his neighbors about buying the most expensive women’s clothes and attending their weddings.

The housewife found in the sale of water from her husband’s well what was enough for her and her offspring without having to supervise the Asian worker and audit the accounts with him, and for this she accepted the worker’s negotiation to (commercial concealment) ) do for him in exchange for a small a lump sum from the mall’s profits, and her father was busy documenting her ownership. His land, assets and investments in it are with the competent authorities.

It is paradoxical that the children, despite (their preoccupation as a mosque imam, muezzin, servant, head of a charity and washing the dead), nevertheless began to control (advertisement management) the center), blackmailing (the Asian worker) with the need to close during prayer time, and sometimes controlling the goods in the store and her kind, until alienating customers who come from their village and neighboring villages. The children’s ambition was for everyone in the village to understand that they were the real owners of this mall, not their father, and the (Asian worker) nodded approvingly to all their requests as long as they were satisfied with the lump sum. because of its commercial cover-up of it, with some discounts for the head of the charity when buying from him, and the children were They are proud of everything that symbolizes their (formal) influence on the mall, although all that their mother gives them from the proceeds of the sale of water they spend to buy from the Asian worker and his relatives whom he brought under his mother’s sponsorship to help him in the business!

One day their father came from one of his foreign trips and said to his wife: Have you been following the news? She said: You know our house is not on television, so we have our privacy and we are not like neighbors. The husband said to her: “The huge sums we earned from selling water to the people will be abolished or at least the expenses of your sons and daughters will not be enough. The wife said: And the shopping center?” The husband replied firmly: The small lump sum you are taking behind me from the Asian worker will not be enough for you and your children. The husband said: The solution is for your sons and daughters to run our shops themselves. My sons and daughters distribute many tasks within the stores, from cashiers to marketing managers to bakers… And we will plow our farmland again.

The wife said: So how do you convince your sons and daughters of that?! Do you think they are like their grandparents in (trade, industry and agriculture) By God, he said to her: I will start with you, and you will go to school (literacy) because my future projects for this country go beyond the ideas of our old mud houses, to be the best house in the village of Arabistan, we will be, my dear wife, the best house in the city of the New World.

The wise father’s children were of different ages. Those over 50 respectfully followed their father’s wishes and instructions towards (development and change) despite their lack of understanding of what happened to their mother before it happened to them, with the exception of their brother (Anad) who sided with (the Asian worker) against their father because of private (money transfers) from a stubborn worker, and he thought that his father did not know about it, so he met with his brothers and sisters and said: Our father wants to take care of leave the hereafter to the cares of the world, then he provoked his younger brothers with religious expressions against their father so that they would not feel what they would do from disobedience. So the father took his son (Anad) alone and whispered in his ear: Do you want me to tell your brothers about the transfers of Asian workers to you and where you spent them?! So the stubborn ones fell silent, and not even a month had passed since this incident, except that (Anad) changed his name to (Samih), and joined one of the (etiquette) courses, and as for the young men and women, they started with enthusiasm . and joy, sticking to his father’s various projects on their Mubarek land.

Finally: I remember when I was young, we studied in the basic stage that the population in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was six million people, so do we understand the difference in challenges between that time and the current population that exceeds 30 million people?! Whatever surrealism you see in the story above, it is extravagantly surreal in its naivety compared to the political and economic challenges our country has overcome from its inception to the present, with glory, justice and immortal glory.