Al-Zaid ... and the cemetery
i did my duty to offer condolences to the family of the deceased, the late colleague naji saud al-zaid, who left after leaving behind a rich legacy of academic, scientific, and journalistic work, where he excelled in alqabas, and later in al-jarida, and was an example of a person committed to what he wrote and what he preached. it demands the necessity of respecting work and the law and being honest with oneself before being honest with others.
my meetings with him, when he was writing in al-qabas, were rare, partly due to the difference in our paths, and the scarcity of my visits to the al-qabas building. i did not meet him after he stopped writing for al-qabas, until recently, after illness forced him to go to hospital, where he remained for a long period, before his death, at a relatively young age.
my views and positions differed very little from his, and what united us was more than what divided us. he was concerned, like other good citizens, whose numbers are decreasing every day, about the state’s situation, hoping that things would soon turn for the better, but destiny did not give him time to see the dawn of the coming reform, which we have finally become self-wishing for!
my visit to the cemetery, although rare, was as painful as usual, not only to offer condolences to a great friend, but also because the place is fi lled with scenes, chaos, and violations that increase every day, and the painful irony is that among those who came to offer their condolences to the deceased, were those who disobeyed everything that the deceased represented and wrote about the necessity of respecting others and respecting the laws, where you fi nd those who, without shame, and among them those who appear to have all the characteristics of the clergy and the trappings of religiosity, violate the simplest rules of taste, and bypass everyone, without care or respect, despite dozens of paintings that adorn the funeral hall, asking mourners to remain committed to the rules and not to jump the queue when offering condolences, especially in a place that has reverence and respect, knowing that the difference in time, between the one who respected himself and his role, and the one who insulted himself and did not respect others, does not exceed a very few minutes.
then the second appearance of chaos begins after the end of the funeral, as vehicles tangle with each other on their way, either out of the parking lots or through the poorly designed cemetery gates. this is in addition to the dozens who parked their vehicles in no parking places, causing inconvenience and delay to others.
it is strange that someone leaves his house and spends more than an hour going back and forth, and when the line of mourners begins to move, he does not have patience for a few minutes and insists on insulting others.
this is one of the characteristics of backward peoples people with bad habits, and those who commit acts that were previously forbidden by those who attended his burial in many of his articles. still, it seems that these are not readers of his articles, not even newspaper readers.
moreover, no minister of education has ever cared about the country''s bad state of morals, so he did not even consider including a few pages of it in school curricula.
nations without morals – and we, of course, cannot survive!
