The Egyptian car mechanic is a master of ingenuity, skilled in defying the odds to bring a scrap vehicle back to life. This mechanical genius can fit a Peugeot engine into a Fiat chassis, mount it on Jeep tyres, and have it all run by the sheer blessing of a Mercedes steering wheel. As for the electrics of this Frankenstein-like creation, the young men of al-Hirafiyyin district—may God bless them—are never daunted by a challenge. No wire is too complex for them to manipulate.
Miraculously, such cars roam the streets of Egypt, rattling the ground with pride in their makeshift innovation—just as they rattle it with noise, chaos, and pollution. And should misfortune befall one of these vehicles, there is always someone ready to patch it up on the spot. A wire might be changed or removed entirely, or perhaps a new circuit invented out of sheer imagination.
If the car happens to crash, perhaps because it was swaying along the road, or maybe strutting with arrogance among its more conventional counterparts, there is no need for a service centre. Its owner need not even drag it to a body shop.
One of the local geniuses will show up with a hammer and a grease-stained wooden block, worn by decades of use. With just two well-placed strikes—cold hammering, no heat treatment required—the car will rise from its ailment ‘like a horse’, strutting back onto the road with all its former swagger. No need for inspections, no need for any official check-ups. Everything is left to fate.
And just like cold hammering a wrecked car back into shape, Egypt’s economic and legislative system operates in much the same way. Laws are patched together haphazardly—whatever keeps things moving. One regulation after another, stacked on top of each other, slapped together quickly so that the road stays open. The prevailing philosophy: leave it as it is, and somehow, things will sort themselves out later.
But reason is a virtue, and we must understand that God will not permit us to neglect the minds He has given us. There must come a moment when everything grinds to a halt. A moment when no amount of hammering—no amount of grease-stained wood—can revive an economic entity that has lost all identity. The warning signs are already there, one after the other, yet the road remains open.
The latest crisis surrounding the Madinaty project is a case in point. There are four different laws governing land allocation: the 1979 law on the New Urban Communities Authority, the 1981 law on land reclamation and agricultural development, the 1995 law on industrial development, and the 1997 law on tourism development. These laws apply across different ministries, each with a specific goal—whether agricultural, industrial, or tourism-related.
Then, in 1998, the government introduced a general law regulating tenders and auctions, Law 89, which set broad conditions for land allocation nationwide. However, it failed to clarify the relationship between this general law and the four existing laws governing land distribution for investors. To complicate matters further, in 2001, the cabinet issued several executive regulations concerning the New Urban Communities Authority, effectively reaffirming the authority of the 1979 law—despite the existence of the 1998 law.
Yet, in the legal dispute over Madinaty’s ownership of its project land, the Administrative Court based its ruling on the 1998 tenders and auctions law, disregarding the 1979 law on new urban communities. As a result, all contracts signed under the latter were deemed invalid.
The project’s developer was quick to respond, declaring firmly: ‘This ruling stems from a dispute between the New Urban Communities Authority and the Administrative Court. The company is not a party to this conflict and has no involvement in it.’
So, the New Urban Communities Authority is in the right. The Administrative Court is also in the right. And the Madinaty company is as innocent as the wolf accused of devouring Jacob’s son. That leaves just one suspect, against whom all evidence is now piling up—one culprit who must be held accountable in broad daylight in Kit Kat Square. The true offender? The heartless mechanic from al-Hirafiyyin district, who never learned from his apprentice Balya the difference between cold hammering and hot hammering.
This article is originally published by AlBorsa in Arabic and later AI-translated by South Push.