TAXI!

[NGONGE]

Editor’s Note: A View from the Streets of Cairo

Khaled Al Khamissi calls Cairo’s taxi drivers the bloodstream of the city. His 2007 book Taxi, which features essays about his taxicab conversations with drivers, gives their struggles for survival a voice on the printed page. The blunt opinions, emotion and humor of what Khamissi calls “the language of the streets” have made the book a bestseller throughout Egypt and the Arab world. Excerpted here are Khamissi's intro to the book as well as a few chapters that shed light on the struggle to work and to educate one’s children in Egypt.

 

Intro: Words that need to be said

For years I’ve been a prize customer for taxis, taking them through all the highways and byways of Cairo, so much so that I know the lanes and the potholes better than any driver. (A little conceit never did any harm.)

 

I’m one of those people who likes to talk to taxi drivers, for they really are one of the barometers of the unruly Egyptian street. This book contains between its covers some of the stories I shared with taxi drivers and some of the things that happened while I was in their company between April 2005 and March 2006.

 

I say that the book contains some of the stories and not all of them because lawyer friends of mine told me that publishing them all would guarantee my being thrown in jail on libel charges and that it could be dangerous to record the precise names in jokes or particular stories which are widely circulated on the streets of Egypt.

Dangerous, young man. That’s a pity because those popular stories and jokes will be lost unless recorded.

 

I have tried to relate these stories as they are, in the language of the street – a special, blunt, vital and honest language quite different from the language of salons and seminars that we are used to.

 

My role here is certainly not to check the accuracy of the information I collected and wrote down. What matters here is what a particular individual says in a society at a particular moment of history on a certain subject because sociology transcends the factual in the scale of priorities of this book.

 

 

Taxi drivers belong mostly to an economically deprived sector of the population. They work at a trade which is physically exhausting: sitting constantly in dilapidated cars wrecks their spines and the ceaseless shouting that goes on in the streets of Cairo destroys their nervous systems. The endless heavy traffic drains them psychologically and the struggle to make a living, a literal struggle, strains the sinews of their bodies to the limit. Add to that the constant arguing back and forth with passengers, in the absence of any system for calculating fares, and with the police who generally treat them in a way that would make the Marquis de **** feel comfortable in his grave.

 

On top of that the income from a taxi, if calculated scientifically, that is taking into account all the elements such as depreciation, the driver’s wages, taxes and the cost of spare parts and of fines and so on, we’ll find that it’s 100 percent a losing proposition. The drivers think the taxi is making money because they don’t allow for many of the unseen costs. So most of the taxis are falling to pieces, miserable and dirty, and the drivers work on them like slaves.

 

A number of decrees have encouraged an unprecedented interest in the taxi business, to the extent that the number of taxis in Greater Cairo has risen to 80,000. The most important decree, issued in the second half of the 90s, was to allow any old car to be converted into a taxi. The second decree brought banks into the business of giving car loans, which included loans for taxis. In that way a large number of unemployed people joined the ranks of the taxi drivers and began a really torturous path to cover the installments on their loans. The effort of these tortured wretches has been transformed into more profit for the banks, the car companies and the importers of spare parts.

 

As a result, you now find taxi drivers from all walks of life and of all levels of education, starting with illiterates up to people with master’s degrees, although I have not yet met taxi drivers with doctorates.

 

These taxi drivers have a broad knowledge of society because in practice they live on the strees and they meet an amazing mix of people every day. Through the conversations they hold they reflect an amalgam of points of view, which are most representative of the poor in Egyptian society.

 

It must be said that often I see in the political analysis of some drivers a greater depth than I find among a number of political analysts who pontificate far and wide. For the culture of this nation comes to light through the simple people, and the Egyptian people really a teacher to anyone wishes to learn.

Khaled Al Khamissi

Cairo, March 2006

[NGONGE]

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The question of education and private lessons is right at the top of the list of Egyptians’ concerns, in a place shared only by the struggle to make a living. The two questions dominate the thinking of the great mass of the people, since Egyptian society is fundamentally family-based and children fill the Egyptian family with clamour, love, hope, and, definitely, worry about the problem of education and private lessons.

 

To complete the cosmic cycle, every Egyptian struggles to make a living so that he can give his earnings to private teachers. Private lessons are like brand names. You can find them at all prices to suit every class and segment of society. Maths lessons can be for 10 pounds a session, and equally for 100 pounds. If your income doesn’t permit you to pay 10 pounds, then there are classes for revision, group lessons and study centres, businesses in every shape and form.

 

With a driver who has children of school age, you only have to push the education button for him to set off like a rocket and no one can stop him, not even NASA engineers in person.

 

On that day in September 2005 I had paid the school fees of my three children and as soon as I sat down in the taxi, the money I had paid to the school still hot in the safe, I pressed the start button and off the driver went:

 

“My children are going to give me a stroke. My only boy’s in the sixth grade primary and I swear he can’t write his own name, but at the end of the year they help him cheat and he passes to the next year or else the school’s in trouble and gets passes to the next year or else the school’s in trouble and gets cross-examined by the ministry. I also have two girls in secondary school, one in the third grade and the other in the second grade secondary.

 

“Thankfully the girls are clever, but they cost me the earth in private lessons. I pay 120 pounds a month on each one. Imagine, each of them takes private lessons in three subjects and each subject costs 40 pounds a month, enough to drive us to ruin double quick. As for the boy Albert, when he grows up, dimwitted as he is, how much will I spend on him for private lessons?

 

“You know what we do? Evelyn, that’s the elder girl, gives him private lessons and gets money from me to pay for her private lessons. Because I have to teach her to make her own money through efforts.” He laughed.

 

“But it’s clear she’s useless and doesn’t know how to teach anything. All she does is take money from me.”

 

“Okay and what’s with the school?” I asked.

 

“What do you mean school? I tell you he can’t write his own name. You call that a school? That’s what free education brings you. The veil of shame has finally been lifted. These days, if you don’t pay anything you don’t get anything. And the trouble is that we do pay anyway. In the primary school we pay 40 pounds to get the books and in middle school and secondary 80 pounds and 100 pounds. Unless you pay there are no books. I mean the system is, either pay or no books.

 

“Education for everyone, sir, was a wonderful dream and, like many dreams, it’s gone, leaving only the illusion. On paper, education is like water and air, compulsory for everyone, but the reality is that rich people get educated and work and make money, while the poor don’t get educated and don’t get jobs and don’t earn anything. They loaf around, and I can show them to you, they can’t find anything to do, except of course the geniuses. And our boy Albert is definitely not one of those.

 

“But I am trying with him. I pay for private lessons like a dog. What else can I do? I say maybe God will breathe life into him and he’ll turn out like Ahmed Zeweil, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry.”

 

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/egypt804/resources/taxi.html

[N.O.R.F]

I must have walked past this book a dozen times in bookshops (I usually go straight to kids the section heh). Your take NG?

[NGONGE]

A Fear of Hunger

 

One of the direct social effects of the Kefaya opposition movement on the streets of Cairo is that it pushed up the taxi meters on demonstration days. Of course by meters I mean the taxi fees because the meter is there just as an ornament to embellish the car and to tear the trousers of customers who sit next to the driver.

 

On that particular day I was in Shooting Club Street in Dokki and heading downtown, standing looking for a taxi. Whenever I waved to one and shouted out: ‘Downtown’, the driver would brush me off and keep on driving. That was strange. It took me back to the days of the 1980s when finding Ali Baba’s treasure was easier than finding an empty taxi. You only have to look back at the cartoons of that period to see how taxi customers like me suffered from the ‘yellow towel’ folded over the meter. Please god don’t bring such days back! Now you stand for less than a minute to ride a beautiful taxi and you can choose from among dozens of vehicles, except that day, until one driver obliged, stopped and asked seven pounds for the trip. ‘Why?’ I shouted,

 

‘There are demonstrations and the world’s turned upside down and it’ll take me an hour to get you there,’ he answered. ‘I tell you, seven pounds won’t be enough. I’ll do it for ten pounds.’ To cut a long story short, I agreed to pay ten pounds for the trip, for which I usually pay three pounds.

 

It was indeed impossible to move. The cars were bumper to bumper and on top of each other on the street, moving not an inch, as though we were imprisoned in a giant garage.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Demonstrations,‘ said the driver. ‘Dunno why. There are about 200 people holding banners and around them about 2,000 riot police and 200 officers, and riot police trucks blocking everything.

 

‘All this crowd for 200 people?’ I said.

 

‘The crowd’s not from the demonstration, and it’s not much of a demonstration in the first place. In the old days we used to go out on the streets with 50,000 people, with 100,000. But now there’s nothing that matters. How many people are going to step out of their front door for something no one understands? And the government’s terrified, its knees are shaking. I mean, one puff and the government will fall, a government without knees.’ He laughed out loud.

 

‘You think the government needs legs?’ I said.

 

‘Nothing doing with the government, puffed up with false pride. But the problem’s with us.’ Said the driver.

 

‘How so?’ I said.

 

‘You know what was the beginning of the end?’

 

‘What?’

 

‘The 18^th and 19^th of January,’ he said.

 

I was stunned by this answer, which I was hearing for the first time. I had expected many conventional responses, but the 18^th and 19^th of January! This was new, and I wondered whether the driver knew that the demonstrations on those day, which President Sadat called ‘The Uprising of the Thieves’, took place in 1977. I don’t know for certain why this ****** question came to my mind but I put it to him anyway. ‘What year was that?’ I said.

 

‘In the 70s, I mean about 1979,’ he said.

 

‘And why was that the beginning of the end?’

 

‘Those were the last serious demonstrations on the streets. In the 1960s we did many protests and in the 1970s before the 1973 war they were very frequent. After that Sadat, God curse him wherever he goes, issued decrees that put up the price of everything. The world turned upside down. People understood politics and they went out on the streets and made Sadat go back on his word. At the time we heard he’d taken fright and fled to Aswan and was saying that if he was overthrown properly, he’d flee to Sudan, the coward. My God, anyone could have seized power that day, but there wasn’t anyone, just a bunch of wretches wanting prices to come down.

 

‘In Abdel Nasser’s time we went on demonstrations that made a real impact and suddenly we would find him there among us in Tahrir Square. He hadn’t gone off to Aswan or even gone home. That’s what happened after the Defeat, can’t remember exactly when.’

 

‘I still haven’t understood why the 18^th and 19^th January were the beginning of the end,’ I interjected.

 

‘After that the government realised that it had to get its act together, and that these demonstrations had become a serious danger to them. The 18^th and 19^th of January were not just anything, that was the start of a revolution, but you know what, it wasn’t completed. And since then the government has planted in us a fear of hunger. It’s made every woman hold her husband by the arm and say to him: ‘Mind you don’t go out. The kids will die.’ They planted hunger in the belly of every Egyptian, a terror that made everyone look out for himself or say ‘Why should I make it my problem?’ so that ‘s why the 18^th and 19^th of January were the beginning of the end.’

 

Were the 18^th and 19^th of January really the beginning of the end? And what is this end that the driver was talking about with such simplicity and such certainty?

 

 

Driving to South Africa

 

'You know, I have a big dream,' the driver said. 'A dream I live for, because without a dream you can't live. Otherwise you always feel sluggish and you can't get out of bed, you get depressed and start wanting to die. But someone with a dream you find sprightly and energetic, like a spinning top, a blazing fire that won't go out. I'll stay ablaze like that, going round and about and saving money for four years.

 

'You know what my dream is? To take my taxi in four years’ time and drive as far as South Africa and see the world Cup there. I’ll pile up the pennies for four years and then go explore the African continent from the north of it, where I am now, to the south of it. I’ll cross every African country and drive up the Nile until I come to the start of it, as far as Lake Victoria I mean, and on the way I’ll sleep in the car, and in the boot of the car I’ll stack away food to last me two months, tins of beans and tuna, and a shitload of bread, because I really like bread.

‘I’ll look at the jungles and the lions and the tigers and the monkeys, the elephants and the gazelles. And I’ll get to know new people, people from the Sudan and all the countries beyond. I still don’t know exactly which countries I will cross. I bought an atlas from the bookshop and looked at it but I haven’t fixed the route yet.

‘When I reach South Africa I’ll go to the southernmost point on the African continent on the ocean and I’ll look with my own eyes and see the South Pole from afar.

‘Of course I’ll go to all the matches. I’m planning to apply to the Football Federation here, which is next to Ahli Club in Zamalek, so they’ll get me some tickets. Since we’re all Africans together they’re bound to help us out.

‘Basically I drive all day long. You know, I drive about 15 hours a day. I mean, I’m used to it. I’ll have no problem driving to South Africa.

‘That’s my dream and I have to make it come true.’

I didn’t want to tell him that there’s no paved road linking Abu Simbel, the last town in Egypt, with Sudan, and the road stemming from the Toshka road to Sudan is closed, and that there isn’t even a continuous railway line linking Egypt and Sudan, or that even if he reached Sudan then he wouldn’t be allowed to go to southern Sudan without security permits from the Khartoum authorities, which he would not be able to obtain. Or that Cairo taxis aren’t allowed to leave the country.

I forgot to tell him that the African continent is fragmented and disconnected, completely colonized, and that the only people who can still travel there are definitely not the indigenous Africans but rather the white lords, who make the African doors which swing open only for them. Long gone are the days of Ali Baba, who could open doors just by saying ‘Sesame’.

 

http://www.african-writing.com/six/khaledkhamissi.htm

[NGONGE]

Story No. 31

 

When the distance is short I usually don’t start any conversations, and my trip was around three minutes.

The driver was listening to “um Kulthoum” on the radio and that was another reason to keep quiet and listen, it’s rare when those drivers put any good music.

But this time the driver didn’t give me the chance to meditate.

He looked at me and asked…

Driver: Do you know Pacha what is the worst thing ever? (Pacha is the highest honorary title in official usage in the Ottoman Empire, still widely used for respect in Egypt)

I thought he was kidding but then I saw his serious face, so I took a moment to think and responded.

Me: If Egypt would have lost the African Cup yesterday?

Driver: No Pacha there is something worse

Me: Like what?

Driver: Like loving a prostitute.

Me: And how do you know, do you know anyone who had been in such love story?

Driver: Yes it’s me Pacha, I love woman, sorry for the word a whore.

I was already in front of Café Bascoi and my sister and cousin were waiting for me but this driver had made me very curious, plus he really needed to talk.

Me: And how did that happen?

Driver: A veiled, very decent looking women stopped me at 11 pm and asked me to take her to Mohandsin..

That was in August so around 5 months ago, after I dropped her she asked me to come back in two hours sharp because she is going to visit some sick relative after.

I’m an Upper Egyptian man, and of course she is being a woman, I wouldn’t like if she would have any troubles at night.

So I came back in two hours and she asked me to take her to “Manshiet Nasir”, I asked her for 25 pounds and she responded: No, I will actually give you 50 Pounds, My client was a very generous man.

The word client went like a bullet through my ears and brains, and I put on an angry mask.

She responded: What did you want me to tell you? What would a woman be doing from a house to house at 1:00 am?

After a long conversation, I kind of sympathized with her and agreed to take her to the same address tomorrow at 11.

Long story short, I kept driving her for a week, and then she gave me her phone number and told me to call her if I need “something”

I don’t know what happened, since then all I could think about is this whore. And I keep looking into my mirror and ask myself, a prostitute?? A prostitute you son of a *****?

And what makes it even worse, everyday while driving I see her walking among people, I brake and look and it would be someone in her height or body shape.

I couldn’t do anything but to call her and ask to meet her, and once I saw her I found myself speaking out I love you!

She laughed and responded, so you want to “Hump” or “Grope”?

Driver responded: No I want to marry you.

She responded: then you are probably dumb, and she left.

I don’t know what to do Pacha, do you believe an Upper Egyptian from Sohaj, loves a prostitute and from the bottom of his heart?

I can’t stop thinking of her; you see this is the real curse.

I left the taxi and told him from the window…

But after all you didn’t “Hump”, “Grope” or got married, May God be with you.

 

Story No. 13

 

As we were driving along the Cairo University wall I let slip to the taxi driver how nostalgic I felt for my college days and confessed to him that the dreams for Egypt I dreamt within these walls even now shook me to the core, despite the passage of two decades since my graduation.

I said that most of those who sold out had received the keys to the gates, while those who continued to dream had seen their towering hopes dashed to the ground by battering rams.

“And which faculty were you in?” the driver asked.

“Economics and political science,” I said.

“So you studied politics, sir?”

“Yes.”

“That’s great, an excellent opportunity, because for ages I’ve had a question I wanted to ask,” said the driver.

“And what’s the question that maybe I can answer?”

“What would happen if we came and said to America: ‘You have nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction and if you don’t get rid of all these weapons, we will break relations with you and declare war on you, and we will have to use military force to protect Cuba, which is a small country

and we have to look after it.?

“Of course, we wouldn’t be serious, but we would force the world to take positions. And the world would have to stand with us as they stood with them when they said the same thing against Iraq, and as they are saying now against Iran.

I’m not saying we would fight them. Of course you definitely understand me. But we would say exactly the same thing as they are saying to the countries of the world. I mean, for example, we’d ask to monitor the American elections because we’re not confident their election procedures are sound, we’d ask for there to be international monitoring of the ballot boxes, and anyway we would have the right to say that, ‘cause everyone in America and the whole world said there was fraud in the Bush elections and that his brother in his state fixed the elections and made him win. And we’d say we have to defend democracy and we have to send Egyptian judges from here to make sure the democratic process is proper.

“You know if we did that, we’d make them understand what they are doing to people, and we’d vent some of the anger that’s inside us, just like when some disaster happensand there’s nothing to be done and you let off steam to whoever and you find yourself calmed down, but the disaster’s still the same as it was.

“Or else we could sue America for supporting international terrorism and taking sides with countries which aren’t democratic, and get evidence of that and, as you know, it’s very easy to get evidence, especially in such a matter. Then when you make this move, you’re on the side of democracy and against terrorism and you’ll find a few countries taking your side against America.

“We could also call for economic sanctions against America if they don’t comply, I mean take what Rice says every day to all the poor countries in the world and say the same thing to their faces.

“The most important thing is that all of us should cancel out the word “Americans”. We should say ‘White Irish Protestant American, or Black Muslim American, or Hispanic American, or White Catholic American, or Black Protestant American, just like they say these days: ‘six Iraqi Shi’ites died and two Iraqi Sunnis’, and the sons of *****es at our newspapers repeat the same thing, and of course you find them saying:

‘an Egyptian Christian’ and ‘an Egyptian Muslim’, and of

course we have to demand as loud as we can the right to defend the rights of the blacks in America, and sue if some White Scottish American kills some Black African American, of course we have to make a big scene at least because he’s African like us, I mean, he’s much more closely related to us than a White Italian American with freckles is to some Egyptian Christian, I mean, protecting the rights of the black minority there, that’s our role, and we have to intervene in everything big and small.

“I know I always talk too much and repeat myself. I’m waiting for you to respond but you just hold your tongue and don’t respond.”

“I’m thinking about what you’re saying,” I answered.

“You see, I leave the radio on all day and every day what the Americans say gets up my nose. It’s enough to drive a man out of his senses. It’s very serious because soon people will explode. ‘We feed you, we put you on your potty, do this, don’t do that.’ Soon we’ll burst and that’ll be the end of it.

So I had this idea, that we should do to them just as they do to us. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. And those people live in houses of cracked glass mixed with

cancer.”

“Okay so why don’t you send that suggestion to…” I started.

“I’m just letting off steam, man, I mean shooting the breeze. They’re ready to let the Americans do anything to us.

The suggestion they might like is the Americans put a camera in every Egyptian house so they can monitor the population explosion.”

 

http://nanotch.com/afblog/?p=18

[NGONGE]

N.O.R.F;725026 wrote:

I must have walked past this book a dozen times in bookshops (I usually go straight to kids the section heh). Your take NG?

That's why I posted some of the stories, it tells you how the Egyptian "street" felt and gives you a hint for the reasons for their recent revolution. Or else, it's a clever way by the author to sidestep censorship (in Mubarak's days).

[Blessed]

Nice book. Really want to go Egypt sometime, Insha Allah. I love their energy.

 

p.s I've got a copy at home.