I OFTEN get, like many others, telephone calls requesting personal help or intervention – “wasta” – to secure a job or speed up some government paperwork or private business. There are even people who believe that the business of writing is based on wasta and they ask writers like myself to put in a good word for them to get an article or even just a short opinion published somewhere or other. The interesting thing about it is that most of the calls come from relatively young people, many of whom have university degrees, but young people of all types who are convinced that without wasta there's no simply way forward for them. And it's understandable, when they see someone progress without the slightest effort just because they have a father or some other relative with power and influence, but the other side of the coin is that they end up making wasta the point around which their whole lives revolve, until the idea takes complete hold of them and they lose all will and resolve and instead sit around waiting for lifelines to be thrown at them from someone or somewhere. Wasta has a significant presence in every society in the world. Personal contacts benefit people however organized or lawfully-minded the social, economic or political system of the country in question. In Europe, America and even Japan you can find the same story, but what marks those societies as of good character and high standing is that wasta is regarded as unacceptable, by custom and law, and its practice is mostly conducted in secret. It's only us where social or professional climbing in order to succeed where others fail is seen as something to boast about. In this way an individual's determination is no longer associated with willpower, but instead with the ability to make friends with influential people, to the point where the words “cunning” or “sharp” or “having connections” have become synonyms for “successful”. This increasingly recurring image in our society no doubt reflects the way people think. It also perhaps explains the desperation which has taken hold of a lot of young people today, most of whom would be more than capable of proving themselves if they were able to get over the hurdle of wasta instead of resorting to it, and if they had faith in hard work and diligence as being a greater force then wasta. I'm entirely convinced that the successful individual is still capable of proving himself, however great the disparity in opportunities. I've seen with my own eyes through considerable trials and experience that while wasta may be the swiftest path upwards for any given person, it is also the most destructive force for that person. For the lesson for the young is not in reaching the summit, but in staying there, and if that is achieved by wasta once, it won't happen every time, for if that were so they'd end up in a right state of affairs.
