From the moment she boarded a direct flight from Cairo to London, 28-year-old Reem kept her eyes wide open and started recording every moment of her first-ever trip abroad. Spending ten days in the UK, Reem Metwali, an engineer in an Egyptian Internet service provider, was captivated by the museums, weather, shopping venues and the legendary Big Ben. But what really surprised her about London was that people were reading everywhere. “And I don't know why!" Reem's spontaneous comments summarise the attitude of Egyptians towards reading, which was revealed in a recent report on local reading tendencies that showed that 88 per cent of Egyptian families do not read in the first place and that to them reading is a process limited to school textbooks. The number of Egyptian families, in which at least one of their members maintains a regular reading habit, is 2.2 million, according to the report prepared by the Cabinet's Information and Decision-making Support Centre (IDSC). In this, the most populous Arab country, reading books or newspapers is something uncommon; it's very rare to find someone reading on the Underground or other kinds of public transport or in any other public place. That's why Reem was really touched by the Britons' passion for reading. "Even in cafés, parks and shopping centres, people were reading wholeheartedly. That's not how it goes in Egypt; I might read but not all the time and definitely not in a shopping centre," Reem commented. In the Jubilee Underground shopping centre in Canary Wharf, books seem to be the key player. People are shopping, eating, sitting and having coffee, while reading too. "That's what I do," Elisabeth Kent, an employee in an international bank near the shopping centre, told the Mail, while reading a book and having lunch. "I always read during my lunch break. It's the best time in my day; it reduces the tension in my job and refreshes my mind." Elisabeth was surprised when she was asked about her daily reading habits, simply because it's so normal for people like her. In the UK, the average reading rate is seven books per person per year, while in the Arab world it's 1/4 of a page per person per year. (That's around 30 seconds of reading). The recent IDSC report also revealed information about what Egyptians read about. It mentioned that 79 per cent of readers go for religious books, followed by scientific titles, then literature and finally political themes, which appeal to 11 per cent of readers. "Economic hardship and political suffering make it harder for people to buy books and newspapers to read every day," Sherif Hamed, who works in a library in downtown Cairo, says heatedly. "People are too burdened to read and I can't just blame them; the whole system is to blame." Although statistics show that around 40 per cent of Egyptians live below the poverty line (surviving on less than $2 per day), it isn't all about the economy. In Egyptian culture, reading is not a source of entertainment and pleasure. Instead, it's classified as something dull, connected with schools, exams and obligations. "To make it worse, our educational system doesn't encourage free reading and doesn't stress the value of reading as an eye-and-mind-opener," Hamed adds. In addition to the previously mentioned reasons, satellite channels and the Internet are seen as a substitute for books with their multi-media functions and a variety of options that makes books seem helpless in the competition. Still, for a lot of people, the reading issue in Egypt and the Arab world is more likely to be cultural than an economic- or competition-related thing. "It's merely a cultural issue," Mujahidul-Islam Mouneer, a Briton with Bangladeshi origins, explains. "Here [in the UK], we are used to books as the main source of information and entertainment. I do count on the Internet for searches and stuff, but when it comes to my leisure time it's always a book that fills it up." In the Arab world, a book is published per year for every 12,000 persons, compared in the United Kingdom to a book for every 500 Britons, the Arab Thought Foundation's ‘Culture Development' report stated. "It isn't like that in Bangladesh; people don't really appreciate books or care for them like we do here," Mujahidul-Islam, who has been in the UK for over 15 years, adds. "But living in a society that look up to books makes you ready to read and read and discover more about everything. It's part of my culture now." On the seventh day of her stay in London, Reem, the Egyptian engineer, "caught" herself reading a newspaper on the Underground. She picked up the paper from the empty seat next to hers and just started reading …quot; like everyone else in the train. "When I go back to Cairo, I'll start reading as part of my daily routine, at least on the Tube. I guess people will follow my example over time and that's how I'm going to change my society," Reem concludes with a grin, as she clutches a novel she's just bought at the airport on her way home to Cairo.
