When Che Guevara was captured in his hideout, after being reported by a shepherd,
someone asked the shepherd in astonishment:
“How could you betray a man who spent his whole life defending you and your rights?”
The shepherd simply replied:
“His wars with the enemy frightened my sheep!”
Years later, in Egypt, the great leader Mohamed Karim resisted the French campaign led by Napoleon.But after he was captured, he was sentenced to death.
Napoleon summoned him and said:
“I regret having to execute a man who defended his country as bravely as you did,
and I don’t want history to remember me as someone who killed heroes who fought for their homelands.
Therefore, I will pardon you in exchange for ten thousand gold coins,
as compensation for the soldiers we lost.”
Mohamed Karim smiled and said:
“I don’t have enough, but I have debts owed to me by merchants exceeding a hundred thousand gold coins.”
Napoleon gave him time, so he went to the market, shackled and surrounded by occupation soldiers,carrying hope in those for whom he had sacrificed…
But not a single merchant responded; instead, they blamed him for the destruction of Alexandria and the deterioration of their economic conditions.
Mohamed Karim returned to Napoleon broken-hearted, and Napoleon said to him:
“I will not execute you because you fought us,
but because you sacrificed your life for cowardly people whose trade mattered more to them than the freedom of their homeland.”
And Mohamed Rashid Rida once said:
“A revolutionary for the sake of an ignorant society
is like a man who sets his body on fire to light the way for a blind man.”
