EGYPT: Hey, you’re not dying!
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The man pictured on the cigarette pack appears to be dying.
He’s breathing through an oxygen mask, a wheezing testament to the ills of tobacco.
Only the man is not sick: He’s Hamdy Balala, an Egyptian driver for an ad company who finds himself the unwitting icon of a lawsuit.
Khaled Shaaban, a lawyer, says Balala’s posed picture, stamped on cigarette packs across the country, has duped and frightened the public.
Shaaban has sued Egyptian Health Minister Hatem El-Gabali for trickery. He wants the minister to resign. That’s not likely. Egypt has among the highest percentages of smokers in the world — 60% of adult males light up daily.
But Shaaban is passionate: “The simplest thing we want to see in an authority figure is credibility,” he told Egypt Today magazine. “If he deceived the public then he will never be credible, and he will never gain the public’s trust in any of his actions.”
The drama has become farce, especially for Balala, a heavy smoker with no health problems, who wanted to earn extra money posing for a public service advertisement. Now he’s teased by friends. Strangers accost him on the street.
He stopped talking to reporters after a picture surfaced on Facebook showing Balala smoking while holding up a cigarette pack with his hospitalized image.
Ah, the strange things that can happen when a noble idea gets marketed.
— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo
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