“Oppression is oppressed”

By:Nada Moselhy

“Don’t worry Am not going take your car license, am just going to take the driver’s to give him a lesson” This was the police officer answer to me when me and Yasmin went out of the Shepherd Hotel and found that he is taking the car license and the driver license from my driver!
“Are you out?”
“I just arrived, come because it’s not allowed to wait here for long” My driver replied.

I came out and saw the police security officer taking the license from my driver. It didn’t take me a minute to go out!!

So are people supposed to fly in to their cars or out of it so that the driver won’t take a minute to wait! Anyway, the police officer insisted on taking my driver license not because he waited for me, but because he was not very polite. I called my mum and she told me just pay the fine and take the license. I was totally confused on what to do. So I voluntarily asked, how much is the fine to give us the license? The police officer replied “50 pounds”

I gave my driver 50 pounds to go to another officer who has the license with him to pay and take it, and after three minutes he came back to me saying “He wants 100 pounds not 50!!!” We’re waiting for like 15 minutes just to take the license and the police didn’t stand that the driver will wait for like one minute and decided to punish him!!

I can imagine that my driver maybe replied to the police officer in a provocative tone, and usually anyone driving tries not to provoke any officer to avoid something like that to happen.

The use of power and oppression is such an annoying situation, I watched my driver literally begging the police officer just to give him back the license.

Later on that same day all the Boot Camp students got to meet Ayman Nour, who ran for presidency in 2005, was jailed for some time, and just got out of prison few months ago. I remember him saying “Even oppression is oppressed in Egypt” and when he said that I remembered the morning situation.