Taxi (English edition)

by Khaled Al Khamissi

‘Yes, I know him,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the best place in the world for salted fish.’

  ‘And you were living next door?’

  ‘Yes, I was living right next door,’ the driver said.

  ‘There was a cinema on El-Geish Street called the Hollywood Cinema that used to show five films in the programme, two foreign and one Arabic, then it would repeat two of them. We used to watch three films and then the repeats, and other times after the three films were over we would cross the street and on the other side there was Cinema Misr, may it rest in peace, and all the others too. That one was both winter and summer. The open-air summer cinema was upstairs. We would pay the man anything and jump over and watch the repeats at Cinema Misr. Those were the days . . . At that time a ticket was five piastres14.’

  ‘Do you still remember the films you used to see?’

  ‘There are films you can never forget. My favourite was Red Sun with Charles Bronson. Bronson had a look from under his hat, like this, that we would imitate. Remember that film? How could you not? I’ll remind you. In that film he had caught a Japanese guy but he didn’t trust him so before they went to sleep he tied his shoes to the laces of the Japanese guy’s. When the guy tried to escape, he walked a little as far as the laces would go – Bronson had let them out a bit – and then he fell down and Bronson woke up.

  ‘As for my favourite Egyptian film, that would be The Bus Driver with Nour el-Sherif. I’ve actually watched it ten times. There was also a great American film, but I don’t remember who was in it, called Night of the Living Dead, and of course Godzilla and Die, Monster, Die and Bruce Lee’s Big Boss and the Indian film Two Friends. When White Elephant came out we went to El-Sharq Cinema in Sayyeda Zeinab to see it.’

  ‘Didn’t you go to the theatre?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you mean? I used to go the Vanguard Theatre and we would get tickets for ten piastres. I was just crazy about art. Want to hear something amazing?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I was part of a theatrical group. It was called the Modern Revolutionary group and it was in Galal Street.’

  ‘Where’s Galal Street?’

  ‘That’s a side street off Emadeddin Street right in front of the Cinema Pigale. One day I was eating koshari15 in Goha’s, that’s the most famous koshari shop in Cairo, and I saw lots of young guys standing around and I found out that they were from the Modern Revolutionary group. They told me they were a group from which many very big actors had graduated, like Khayria Ahmed, and they were part of the Ministry of Culture.’

  ‘And then?’ I prompted.

  ‘I applied to join and started doing rehearsals. There was one scene where we come into a hotel and keep shouting out: “Oh People of God here! Oh People of God here!” Later they told us we had to bring clothes from home. Then they told us we had to bring the audience, too!

  ‘I said to myself this group cannot be part of the Ministry of Culture.

  ‘We have to bring the clothes and the customers?! So I quit.’

  ‘So what happened after that?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know what happened. The world changed, or it was me that changed . . . Want to hear something amazing?’

  ‘Sure, go ahead.’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve spoken about this. I hadn’t realised that I haven’t seen a film in about twenty-something years.’

  ‘And all these memories, will they make you go to the cinema again?’ I asked.

  ‘Just by chance, I was taking a fare about a week ago to the Sawiris Tower on the Nile and I heard that a cinema ticket now costs twenty-five pounds, that means exactly a thousand times the price only twenty years ago! Imagine, one thousand times. You know, sir, until after 1980, a ticket at the expensive cinemas was sixteen and a half piastres at the most . . . like Cinema Metro, the Radio, Qasr el-Nil, Cairo and Miami.

  ‘But now most of our cinemas closed down. The Hollywood’s turned into something else, the Misr, the Rio in Bab el-Louk, the Star on Kheirat Street, the Isis, the Ahly and the Hilal summer cinema in Sayyeda Zeinab, and so many others have all closed down.

  ‘Anyway, what I’ve seen I’ve seen and what I haven’t seen I might as well not have seen. I’ve had my time and it’s the kids’ turn. They’ve never been to the cinema or the theatre, and they never will. They watch satellite TV at the coffeeshop downstairs, God help them. Personally, I don’t know what will grow in their brains besides cactus!’

  Nine

  The driver turned the knob to play the cassette. A loud voice blared out, warning of women: ‘My friends in God,’ he said. ‘Let us speak today about the temptations that surround us, and there is no doubt that the biggest temptation surrounding Muslims is the temptation of women. O God, we call on You to protect us from the evil of women. The Prophet of God, May God pray for him and grant him peace, said that what first tempted the nation of Israel was women. Every nation has a temptation and the temptation of this nation is money, but also women. Women are a great temptation, dangerous to the greatest extent. In fact I used to think that temptations were going to diminish, but in the mid-eighties the micro-skirt appeared, then that fashion faded away in the nineties and we thought the matter was over. But here it is these days as strong as ever, the like of which the world has never seen.

  ‘Young girls, from the ages of thirteen to eighteen, have become the worst thing seen on the face of the earth and, I’m sorry to say, I have learned from many young men and taxi and minibus drivers that fornication has spread far and wide and takes place openly – even visibly – and with the consent of fathers and mothers, husbands and wives. We ask God to take revenge on the iniquitous and to protect young Muslims. It’s a disaster, a disaster . . . Today adornment means nakedness. Girls are wearing T-shirts and trousers as though they were wearing nothing. The Prophet of God, may God pray for him and grant him peace, spoke truly when he said: “Women who are clothed yet naked, their heads like the swaying humps of camels, will neither enter Paradise nor find its fragrance.”

  ‘O God, preserve Muslim girls and hide the nakedness of Muslims. It’s a disaster, a disaster . . . The eyes of young men fall left and right on naked bodies, lascivious glances and lewd, wanton laughs, women who are out of control.

  ‘When I go for a walk with young men and they say: “Look at this, sheikh,” I say: “I seek God’s protection from accursed Satan,” but I wonder how any respectable father can allow his daughter to go out of the house dressed like that, as though he were telling her: “Go out and get yourself debauched!”’

  This last sentence from this virtuous sheikh exhausted the very last of my patience and I decided to speak up. ‘What’s this nonsense?’ I asked the driver.

  ‘Nonsense?! What nonsense . . . Don’t say that, sir. That’s a lecture by Sheikh Mohamed Hussein Yaaqoub and he’s right in every word he says. Girls! They’re a plague on us, God protect us. They have all become prostitutes, pardon my language. You, sir, don’t you walk down the street and see for yourself the red and green they put on the faces, painting themselves with the spirit of the Devil?’

  I tried to interrupt him but I failed. He was off and away like a bullet heading for my ear. ‘Don’t be fooled by the headscarves they wear. Look at their tight trousers and the muck they smear on their faces. And don’t let me tell you about the summer and what happens then. God spare us their evil. The Arabs come then, sir, and flood Mohandiseen. If you look, sir, you’ll find the girls like ants on Arab League Street and Batal Ahmed Abdelaziz Street. A disaster, heaven help us! Those girls deserve to be slaughtered, no, slaughtering’s too good for them, they need to be burned.

  ‘Anyway, this is one of the signs of Judgement Day, because the Hour is very near. Decadence is spreading and morals are long gone, corruption’s everywhere, all of these are signs of Judgement Day.’

  I despaired of trying to have a conversation with him and decided to confine myself to listening.

  ‘Did you hear, sir, that there are some count
ries where the number of women is much greater than the number of men? I don’t need to tell you the decadent state those countries are in. That too is a sign of the End of Days. The most important thing is the level of the water in the Sea of Galilee. They say that when the Hour strikes the lake will have completely dried up, and I hear that already it’s drying up and there’s only a little water left.

  ‘What’s happening in Palestine and Jerusalem, it’s perfectly clear. It’s only a matter of a few years and it’ll be over. Those who waged jihad in the name of God will rise up to Heaven and the rest will be trodden into the ground, inshallah.16 And all the unscrupulous and the bloodsuckers will go to Hell, inshallah. And then it will be the women’s turn. They’ll be roasted in Hell until they shout “Enough!”’

  I thanked God with all my heart that I had arrived. I fled from the taxi before the driver’s imprecations could reach me, and thanked God that I wasn’t a woman, because I could have died of grief at all the injustice inflicted on me by this man.

  I was reminded of Amin Maalouf’s beautiful historical novel Balthasar’s Odyssey, in which people are awaiting the Year of the Beast, the day the world would end with the appearance of the Antichrist in the year 1666, and they were looking out for signs of the Hour.

  Every age has its people who hope that the Day of Resurrection is nigh, to bring them justice against tyranny and oppression.

  Ten

  The taxi couldn’t move for the heavy traffic in Nasr City’s Abbas el-Akkad Street. It was nine o’clock in the evening and the shop windows were ablaze with neon lights so bright that I had to close my eyes against the glare. Into the taxi from one of the cafes or shops there drifted the voice of Iraqi singer Kadim al-Saher, singing to his beloved.

  The driver pursed his lips and sighed. ‘Poor Iraq! How I grieve for you!’ he said.

  ‘So have you been to Iraq?’ I asked him.

  ‘I spent the best years of my life there,’ he said. ‘Those Iraqis are the most honourable people. Even now I can’t believe what’s happened to Iraq. It’s not what I expected at all. Poor Iraq!’

  ‘What did you imagine?’ I asked.

  ‘Honestly, I felt that Saddam would beat the Americans. Even when I saw with my own eyes the American tanks rolling down the streets of Baghdad, I told myself that’s a plan Saddam has made to draw them into Baghdad and then do a pincer movement on them and wipe them out. Even now I can’t believe it. But they’re still tough. There’s not a day passes without them killing some Americans. They’ll slaughter them one by one, inshallah.’

  ‘From your mouth to God’s ear,’ I said. ‘But don’t you think that Saddam is the cause of these disasters?’

  ‘To be honest, I like Saddam,’ the driver said. ‘He took some really staunch positions on Egyptians. Don’t forget that he studied in Cairo. In the eighties when I was in Iraq there were some nasty incidents with Egyptians. But then there was Saddam making a speech saying any Iraqi who harassed any Egyptian would get six months in jail. Jail straight away, just like that. Frankly, that’s a position you can’t forget. After that we could walk around Baghdad with our heads held high. Anyway, what happened in Baghdad was official occupation. It’s got nothing to do with Saddam or with anything else. They said they had dangerous weapons and then they didn’t find anything.

  ‘They want their oil, so they went and occupied Iraq. A bunch of thieves and thugs, they smashed everything up and destroyed poor Iraq.

  ‘But as I was telling you, I know the Iraqis well after living with them over ten years. They’re real men and they’ll make the Americans’ lives a living hell. It’ll only be a matter of months and the bastards will be running away from there with their tails between their legs. They’ll save their skins before they have another Vietnam on their hands. Believe me, Iraq will be even worse.’

  ‘So when did you realise that this wasn’t a trick Saddam had pulled and Baghdad really had fallen?’ I asked.

  ‘I swear I had hope until they captured Saddam. That day I cried and cried, and I felt like we were being crushed like insects. I felt I was an ant and anyone could squash me. I felt humiliated and thought of all my friends there wondering whether they were alive or dead. But I’ll tell you one thing, mark my words; it’s Iraq that will triumph in the end. What counts is who laughs last, not who laughs at the start.’

  A burst of optimism lifted my spirits.

  I got out of the taxi under my apartment and found four young men on the street, smoking Marlboros and drinking Coca-Cola. One of them was wearing Nike trainers and another had a T-shirt with the Stars and Stripes on the left sleeve. The burst of optimism evaporated and I went upstairs to my apartment with my head bowed.

  Eleven

  ‘If I told you what happened now you wouldn’t believe me,’ said the driver. ‘I’ve been driving a cab for twenty years and I’ve seen all sorts, but what just happened now was one of the most amusing things that has ever happened to me.’

  ‘Go on then, tell me,’ I asked.

  ‘A woman in a face veil stopped me in Shubra and asked me to drive her to Mohandiseen. She got in the backseat and she had a bag with her. As soon as we were out on the Sixth of October Bridge, I saw her looking right and left, and then she took the veil off her face. I was watching in the mirror, because, look, I have a small mirror under the big mirror so that I can see what’s happening in the back. You have to be on your guard. As the saying goes, better safe than sorry. Anyway, then I found her wearing a headscarf instead. I was surprised but I didn’t say anything. A little later she took off her headscarf and she had her hair up in curlers. Then she started undoing the curlers and putting them in her bag. Then she took out a round brush and started combing her hair.

  ‘I looked in the mirror in front of me, and she yelled: “Look in front of you!” “What are you doing?” I asked her. “None of your business. You drive and keep your mouth shut,” she shouted back at me.

  ‘Between you and me, I thought of stopping the car and making her get out, but then I thought: “What’s it to me?” So I held out to see what else she would take off. Next thing, I found her taking off her skirt. Nice, I thought, we’ll have a free view. I looked again and found her putting on a short skirt and thick black tights that didn’t show anything. She folded up the long skirt and put it in the bag. Then she started taking off her blouse. My eyes were transfixed on the mirror and when the car in front of me suddenly braked I almost ran into it. She shouted at me like a madwoman: “Hey, old man, shame on you, keep your eyes on the road!”

  ‘I saw she was putting on a tight blouse, and pretty too. Honestly, I didn’t reply back. She put the other blouse in the bag and started getting out some make-up stuff and putting on lipstick and rouge on her cheeks. Then she took out an eyelash brush and started working on her eyelashes. In short, by the time I was coming off the bridge into Dokki she was a completely different woman. Another human being, I tell you, you couldn’t say that this was the woman in the veil who stopped me in Shubra.

  ‘She finished off by taking off the slippers she was wearing, taking out a pair of high-heel shoes and putting them on. I told her: “Look, miss, every one of us has their quirks but for God’s sake tell me, what’s your story?”

  ‘The girl looked at me and said, “I’m getting out at Mohieddin Aboulezz.”

  ‘I kept my silence and didn’t repeat the question.

  ‘After a while she started telling me her story: “I work as a waitress in a restaurant there, respectable work, I’m a respectable woman and I do honest work. In this job I have to look good.

  “At home and in the whole quarter I can’t come or go without wearing that veil. One of my friends got me a fake contract to work in a hospital in Ataba and my family think I work there. Frankly, I earn a thousand times as much working here. In a single day I can get in tips what I would earn in one month’s salary in the mouldy old hospital.

  “My friend at the hospital gets 100 pounds a month from me to cover up, an o
pportunistic girl who only looks out for herself. Every day I drop in on her place and get changed. But today it wouldn’t have worked to go to her place so I had to take a taxi to change in. Any other questions, Mr Prosecutor?”

  ‘Lady, I’m no prosecutor, and if I saw one, I’d fall flat on my face. But they say that he who cooks up poison tastes it. You changed in my taxi and I wanted to know why. “Once one knows the reason, the wonder ceases,” I said, and thanked her for telling me the story. Now honestly, isn’t that a strange story, sir?’

  Twelve

  I was chatting with the driver and he turned out to be a longstanding fan of Zamalek football club. When he was young he used to go to the stadium to watch Taha Basri, Mahmoud el-Khawaga, Ali Khalil and fresh young players like Hassan Shehata and Farouk Gaafar. This year (this was the winter of 2005) Zamalek was getting beaten by all the teams.

  I tried to convert him into an Ahly fan like myself but he told me that Zamalek was in a bad way and kept falling behind so it needed someone to stand by it, not like Ahly, which was up at the top of the league and didn’t need anyone to support it. Zamalek was like Egypt, he said, we all have to stand by it so that it stops lagging behind.

  I asked him how we could stand by Egypt.

  ‘We stand by Egypt if we prepare our children for war,’ he replied. ‘It’s true that ever since he came to power Mubarak has managed to steer the ship so Egypt hasn’t got into any confrontations with anyone. To be frank, good for him, that’s the best thing he’s done. The Americans tell us to turn right, we turn right; left, we run to the left. That was important in the past so that we could take a breather and the country’s economy could pick up a little and we could stand on our own feet. To be honest, the man has been able to save the country from any recession.

  ‘But war is inevitable. The Israelis won’t be able not to make war. Peace will kill them and they know that well. They’re itching for a fight. They have their eye on Syria and Iraq and they keep prodding Iran and they have set Palestine on fire. They want it ablaze so they can get more money from the Americans and they can make their young people more Zionist. If everything calmed down, all the Jews would go back to Europe.