"We meet"

Pens and feet

Dr..

Parvin Habib

January 10, 2023

International news networks and communication sites were abuzz with talk about the football player Ronaldo's deal with his new Saudi team, "Al-Nasr", at a value of $ 200 million annually, and the calculators were busy knowing how much he was paid per minute and per second.

so he rejoiced at the deal of the footmen;

And the owners of the pens regretted it.

One of the creators is someone who melts the light of his eyes and burns his nerves throughout his life in exchange for the return of a few days from the Ronald deal. Oh God, there is no envy.

But isn't the irony painful that Van Gogh - one of the world's greatest painters - dies a poor suicide, touching the brink of madness, after he painted 2000 paintings that he could not sell a single one of in his life, after which his paintings are sold for tens of millions of dollars?!

What reminds us of an Arab scholar to whom we owe two great knowledge, the science of prosody and the manufacture of lexicography, and he is Khalil bin Ahmed, about whom his student said that he lived in a hut in Basra that he did not own two pennies, and people earn money with his knowledge.

I know very well that the law of supply and demand is what raises the wages of players to these imaginary levels. Popular sports are based on industries and attract ads that generate millions. It is logical for the makers of the show to get their full share of the profit pie.

But I was struck by the difference between the one who puts a ball between his legs and the one who carries a second ball called head over his shoulders, and there is a difference between the two balls.

For wit, even some prizes that can reverse the misfortune of the creator and get him out of his chronic misery, have no material value. The famous Pulitzer Prize does not exceed $1,000. As for the most famous prize in Francophone literature, the Goncourt, its value is inviting the winning writer to lunch at the Duran restaurant. in Paris.

Were it not for the high sales of the book resulting from winning these awards, the owners would have chanted with the miserable poet Abdul Hameed al-Deeb:

Did you create me, O Lord, or am I delusional.. I was not created because I did not have provision

It is not possible to bridge the gap between the player and the writer, and the creator and the scholar must only be satisfied with the pleasure of knowledge and take comfort in what his predecessors used to say: “If the kings knew what pleasure and bliss we are in, they would have fought us over it with swords.” But when he collides with the requirements of reality, he will inevitably hear the answer of “Maria”, the girl. Which Charles Dickens loved when he got engaged to her: “Dickens is a nice young man, but he is a man of letters. Can he support me with his pen?”

• I was struck by the contrast between the one who puts a ball between his legs and the one who carries a second ball called head over his shoulders, and there is a difference between the two balls.

@DrParweenHabib1

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