- How are you going there?
- By train
- I see. By the way, Do you use trains that much in Syira?
- No. We usually go by bus. It's faster.
- Bus is faster than train. Why?
- Well, we have some very old trains.
- Why is that?
- Well. Before the Word War I, Ottomans were building a railway network. Sultan Abdul Hamid II, with the help of Germans, created a unique, narrow-gauge, railway network. One reason behind that was to prevent the allies from bringing their trains and using the existing network. That was supposed to make it difficult for the allies to take over the region if they won the war, and so they did.
- Do you still have that network?
- It's still there. With date of start as old as 1900, it's a kind of a railway museum. However, we are "trying" to build a standard railway network, because nobody makes the narrow-gauge trains anymore, even Germans don't.
- Why Don't you make your own trains?!
- We...it's....I....I don't know
That was a hell of a straightforward question that kept me awake all night trying to figure out: Why on earth don't we make our own trains?
I was reciting that conversation again and again in my head:
- Why don't you have fast trains?
- Well, Because the Ottomans....
Wait a minute. Who? and When? Why we keep blaming our own problems on Ottomans, who left us before our grandparents were even born? And World War I !! As if it took place last year. Imagine going to fictitious Germany and asking someone: Why your country is destroyed? --> Well, because the allies bombed it during World War II.
What a goddamn answer would that be?
And we have a nice list of things to blame:
because the Ottomans..Because the French..Because the Occupation..Because the war...Because the imperialism..because of Israel...Because the goverment..because the Hell......We can always find somebody or something to blame our own mistakes on. We blame it on the weather if we're left only with it, and we haven't got any English weather, you know! But still, we can say: Because of the heat, or the wind, or the change anyway!
Have you ever heard in our part of the world somebody saying: We or I? Have you ever said: "It's my own fault"?
So, let's try to find a descent answer to that question: "Why don't you make your own trains?"
- "well, because we're a little bit lazy and stupid. that's all"... Or "Because we had two failure generations, and the third looks even worse"...Or "Because we are the best people on earth in finding execuses"...Or "Because we never admit our problems, so we'll never be able to work out solutions". Can You think of better replies?!
Why don't we Build our own trains?!
I'm still waiting for a descent answer!
