The jigsaw

I remember the first gift my mother ever bought for me, 55 years ago. It was a jigsaw cube set, before jigsaw puzzles were readily available in Egypt. It had an image from a fairytale- with a king and queen, a knight in shining armour on a white horse, a dragon and a princess.

This memory came to me, as I was thinking our focus for society in the MENA region is like that of a child observing a jigsaw cube. Instead of looking at the overall picture on 8/16/32 cubes, we are looking at the bracelet the princess is wearing, or the horse’s hooves or the prince’s hairstyle. That is only a part of the cube, but not the whole image.

In my opinion, “WE” need to sit down and put all the cubes needed by the society together before we get to the stage of looking at the details on each cube. It is not too late to think collectively, focus collectively and deliver collectively as a nation.