Dear Sir 

I heard with great concentration the news published on Thursday 27 May 2004 by the semi-official Egyptian news paper Al-Akhbar which reported that the president of Egypt Mr. Hosni Mubarak had signed a presidential decree ordering the demolition of Al-Shatbi Hospital for Gynecology, Maternity and Pediatric Medicine in Alexandria and turning the grounds to a public park which will become part of the cultural complex around the library of Alexandria or Bibliotheca Alexandrina. 

I have been following the controversy surrounding this project for some time, and the least that can be said of such an issue being decided by presidential decree is that it is a remarkable development. It certainly gives credence to the stories that are circulating, that it is Mrs. Mubarak who is behind the project because she finds the hospital a blot on the landscape. Presumably visiting dignitaries particularly foreign ones should be spared the sight of poor Egyptian women queuing to get medical attention for their children.

Whatever the truth of Mrs. Mubarak’s opinions or involvement the fact remains that the decision to demolish the hospital which houses the Gynecology, Maternity and Pediatric Medicine departments of the university of Alexandria is in my opinion extremely ill advised. It will only serve to further enhance the salient sentiment among most Egyptians that “Culture” is a preserve of certain elites who care nothing for common people and who fritter away public funds desperately needed elsewhere.

All the talk of relocating the aforementioned departments to other buildings (newer and better equipped etc.) will not cut any ice with people who know from bitter experience that the facilities accorded them are already scandalously short of their needs, and that any new hospital should have been an addition to and not a replacement of the already existing one.

Nor will the claim that the building of Al-Shatbi Hospital is structurally unsound convince anybody when every one knows that millions of pounds have been spent on restoring the building after it was damaged by the earthquake that hit Egypt in 1992, and on giving it a face lift before the opening of Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Dear Sir, I have visited Bibliotheca Alexandrina and been impressed by it. As a university professor I have great respect for serious cultural enterprise. However, culture should enhance and not diminish people’s lives. If this project is implemented Bibliotheca Alexandrina will cease to be a cultural monument and will become instead a monument to show and elitism. It will then be the duty of every intellectual who wishes to preserve his sense of humanity to boycott this establishment. 

I hope you will do everything in your power to avoid this.