An overweight police officer who appeared standing by a huge puddle of water following violent rainfalls in Alexandria on Sunday said he was offended by comments from social network cynics and body shamers about his looks.
“My wife broke down into tears and my kids refused to go to school fearing sarcasm from their classmates,” Mostafa Mokhtar, a traffic police officer, told LTC satellite TV late Monday.
“I told her ‘what can I do?', let God question them,” he told his wife, referring to his online critics.
Mokhtar, however, said he was grateful for counter-commentators who lauded his work and who helped him overcome his disappointment.
Photos of Mokhtar standing by a rainfall-made puddle near a street in Alexandria have evoked sarcastic comments from social network users, with some quipping that he had sipped out some of the water to help resolve the crisis.
Assistant Interior Minister for Media and Public Relations Abu Bakr Abdel Karim also lauded Mokhtar’s performance. “Mostafa Mokhtar is a highly-disciplined officer and is widely-credited for his efficiency,” he told al-Assema satellite channel on Monday, attributing his physical health to the fact that he had been a former athlete.
“Mokhtar was a former taekwondo athlete, and it is normal that he would gain weight after being away from the sports,” Abdel Karim said.
Famed scriptwriter Amr Samir Atef was also rattled by the wave of sarcasm.
“The officer standing by the water was a national taekwondo champion and an accident that required a spinal cord surgery made him look that way,” Atef wrote on his Facebook page.
“He is one of the oldest traffic officers in Alexandria and people there love him,” Atef added, offering his apology to the officer and “whoever works under such difficult circumstances.”
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
