It all started with a hypothetical question. At a dinner party, someone asked, “What would you do if you had 10 million dollars? What would your priorities be?” The question was tossed around to all those at the table. In the beginning, we laughed since we were all working women, living comfortable lives. Aside from the jokes made about having the best time imaginable, squandering money on travel and expensive items, we still had to think about what we would really do with so much money.
The first speaker said, “I guess I’d pay all my debts, buy a big house and help my family. Even after that, there will still be a lot left so what would I do with the rest?” She paused and then said, “I’ve always thought that if you had extra money, you should think of using it wisely and I think charity would be a suitable way to spend some of it. But I won’t do what some people do — just give money to organizations they know nothing about and then never find out how the money was used. Unlike the people I am talking about, I would follow through with my responsibility and make sure the money was correctly used.” My friend went on, “I would like to donate part of the money to hospitals — not big private ones but small hospitals and clinics as well as public ones. We hear a lot about how public hospitals lack medicine, new machines and equipment. Helping them would be a good way to spend money.”
Then came the turn of another who said, “Well, of course I would benefit personally from the money but I’ve always had an idea of building a factory — a car factory. I cannot understand why nobody here has thought about making cars; we always seem to be happy consuming goods from other countries and even if we have the money, we do not use it to make things that we use and need and which would serve us.”
I said, “You know, I’ve always wondered why we use so many imports, especially things that we use every day. We pray on prayer rugs made in China; our coffee pots (dallah) are also made in China. Saudi men wear headdresses made in Switzerland and England. We seem too lazy to do otherwise.”
Then the friend who had asked the question said with a smile, “Maybe if we had that much money, we’d do like everybody else does. We’d invest the money abroad or build more shopping centers and if we really wanted to feel good about ourselves, we could always set up a factory for making foie-gras which is useless as far as most people are concerned. Still, we’d be convinced that we were doing something good. As for me, I think I’d buy a yacht and dock it in Marbella. I am not sure I could live up to the demands of all these lofty dreams.”
We looked at her and laughed.
I still hope that we hold on to our dreams and don’t let the accepted easy solutions dazzle us too much. After all, in 40 years, we’ll definitely need those factories and hospitals and I imagine those who want foie-gras will go somewhere else anyway.
