God provides livelihood for all his servants in just measure. Everyman receives his full 24 carats of land or luck, not a single unit more or less. Even the cold weather matches the size of your bedcover; the bigger the cover, the colder it gets and when the cover becomes tattered and worn out, the temperature too rises.
Those who collect LE 1,000 at the end of the month feel the same financial strain as those who make 10 times that amount, because they face harsher weather and stronger winds.
But it’s certainly not just about money, despite the fact that, as they say, money is the “joy of this life. The 24 carats also include other types of sustenance. God can give one man wealth but not children, while another man could have wealth and children but not health, and yet another can live in abject poverty but lead a healthy, tranquil life full of faith and harmony.
A greedy man, on the other hand, can have unlimited wealth which never satisfies him. A street sweeper and a minister both get exactly the same livelihood, as our street sweeper would say.
Our great poet Abou Al-Alaa Al-Ma’arry immortalized the same concept in one of his poems: “My livelihood will reach me in any case, and even if I ask for it, it will not increase; life is about luck and acceptance.
The real measure of happiness, satisfaction, tranquility and peace of mind is in the hands of the Almighty God alone. Man has not invented a way to measure happiness. We can measure what we own, like money, children, books, friends, loved ones and even the degree of our knowledge. We have no worldly device to measure the fulfillment of the human spirit. And the things we are able to measure accurately never reflect our level of happiness; hence we can never know the nature of the 24 carats God has bestowed upon us.
Egyptians’ conviction that they have received their livelihood in full is the key to understanding their uniqueness. Egyptians are indeed an exceptional people; for thousands of years they have had a deep reverence for religion.
From the time of Osiris and Isis, to Ra, Amon and Aton, to Christianity to Sunni Islam, to Shiism then back to Sunni, all these phases never changed their basic conviction that God distributes livelihoods with Divine justice. Stemming from that conviction, Egyptians have been on an eternal search for al-satr (protection from scandal and adversity).
Al-satr also means covering the body to protect it from the cold. As we look up towards the heavens and supplicate: “Oh God, grant us al-satr, we ask the Almighty to protect us from the precariousness and cruelty of life, with all its lies and the impossibility of realizing our aspirations.
Some people interpret this faith in the absolute justice of God as the real reason behind our subservience and submission to authority. They claim that Egyptians surrender to extreme humiliation and oppression every day because, on the flip side of the coin, their faith reassures them that they enjoy social justice.
But is that belief in Divine justice the reason behind our current political stagnation? I completely reject such a simplistic and flawed analysis, which goes against our complex social and historical reality.
Yet we cannot deny that it is the key to understanding many social phenomena. We each believe that we get exactly what we are destined to receive.
As I contemplate what Divine justice has bestowed upon me, I am eternally grateful that writing is one of them.
Khaled Al Khamissi is a political scientist and prolific social commentator.
