 |
| Cairo Taxi |
I was a fugitive
from Saddam’s regime from the early 1970s and in late 1988 I found myself in
poor, miserable Mogadishu, Somalia with the only good point being that I was
there working with the UN. The UN provides some form of personal security although
sometimes they overdo it and I have been on many missions, in Near East
countries, where the security officers outnumbered the technical staff. I worked
in Somalia until the end of July 1996 and for the last 6 years there was
security and safe accommodation was always a major problem, there was no police
force, water supply, street lights or even good roads, no telephone system,
banks, hospitals, schools, transport system or taxis.
In September 1996 I
started my job in the Regional Office of the FAO and landing at Cairo airport
and reporting at the office the following morning was a complete departure from
my way of life in the previous eight years in Mogadishu. I found myself in a huge city that I could
roam in at my leisure. Cairo had
everything that I could only dream about in Mogadishu including the famous old black
and white Cairo Taxis. In my new
post in Cairo I had to have a flat (I took one in the suburb of Maadi ) a car
with a diplomatic registration, and a private driver. The driver was essential as
in no way could I manage to drive a car through Cairo’s congested roads. In no
time at all I discovered the novelty of the dilapidated Cairo Taxis with their
famous ‘chatter box’ drivers and their addiction to using the car’s horn for
any or no reason. I enjoyed the ‘fun’ of my trips in the taxis and many times I
used to give my driver time off and take a taxi. It was fun, Cairo Taxis are
another world, a fascinating world, a ride in one was a joy ride with your own
Cairo ‘Google system’ as a driver. In half an hour you heard a lot of local
gossip and gained a lot of information as to what was going on in the city and
Egypt itself.
Immediately on
taking your seat you would be asked, ‘Where are you from?’ I never knew how they recognized foreigners
as in my case I used to pronounce the name of my destination with an Egyptian
accent but every taxi driver immediately
knew that I was not Egyptian. Failure to answer the question resulted in it
being continually asked until the driver’s curiosity was satisfied. Once your
nationality was given, immediately and without fail, every driver would loudly declare
that the people of your country are the best. At first I use to declare my
Iraqi nationality and be told that the Iraqis are the best in the world but
without fail it would be followed by’ Saddam is the best leader in the Arab
world’. That was enough to make my blood boil!
One of the jokes
going around at the time was that a taxi driver had a foreign lady as passenger
and she did not know a word of Arabic. As usual he asked where she was from in
Arabic and as she did not know what he was saying she said ‘WHAT?. The taxi
driver immediately announced in Arabic that ‘What people are the best’! Many
of the taxi drivers had worked in Iraq as there were around 4 million Egyptians
in Iraq during the eight years of Iraq-Iran war. The Egyptians kept the wheels of Saddam’s regime running and it
seemed that many of the taxi drivers I came across in Cairo had worked all over
Iraq at sometime in order to get the purchase cost of a their taxi and pay the
hefty government tax license tax for it.
I developed almost
an addiction to the Egyptian gossip of the taxi drivers most of whom mostly
lived deep in the alleyways and streets of old Cairo. These were areas that many people, even
Egyptians, did not venture into as quite simply it was, and still is, a no go
area. My enjoyment in ‘taxi gossip’ took a knock when drivers started to
recognize me as an Iraqi and began to praise Saddam Hussein, who had destroyed
my family decades ago, as soon as I got into the cab. The collapse of Saddam’s
regime had led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis residing in Cairo and so they
had become familiar again with the Iraqi accents. I was frustrated by this
development and this habit of drivers to sing the praises of Saddam.
One day my car had broken down and I had to
use a taxi, the driver as usual asked where I was from, and because I was not
myself that day, without thinking I told him I was from Israel. It was a risky
answer but I discovered that day that this was the antidote for the verbal
diarrhea of many of the over inquisitive taxi drivers of Cairo.
Two years ago one of
the young authors in Cairo published a fascinating book entitled ‘TAXI’ it
included his conversations with a hundred Cairo Taxi Drivers. It was a
fascinating work.
