Taxi (English edition)

by Khaled Al Khamissi

  As I got out I told him to make whatever decision he wanted and stick to it, and not to think about it after that.

  He took the fare from me and didn’t even look at it. His state of mind when we parted was hardly better than it was when we met.

  Seventeen

  The Pyramids of Giza are the only surviving wonder of the ancient world, a model of splendour and perfection, a marvel and an astonishing phenomenon. Fouad the driver, with his towering frame thinner than a cane, was also one of the seven wonders of the world in the world of drivers. He was a taxi driver, a specialist in the stock exchange, a venerable speculator, a star of stars and the focus of attention of his relatives and friends because he had made some of them rich in a matter of days. He monitored with the eyes of a hawk, as he would put it, any movement in any share. The world of the stock exchange and share movements was his primary world, followed in second place by the taxi world.

  ‘The stock exchange is not gambling, it’s an adventure, I mean there’s only one letter difference between the two words in Arabic. You know, once it gets in your blood, it will never come out. Much harder than giving up smoking,’ said Fouad.

  ‘So why don’t you take it up full-time?’ I asked him. ‘A jack of all trades is the master of none.’

  ‘I only have a mind for one and that’s for the stock exchange. Driving a taxi doesn’t call for a mind, it just takes experience and I’m an expert. Besides, driving’s in my blood and it’s my original job that puts bread on the table, and this car is my car, I don’t rent it. But the money I make on the stock exchange is like dessert. Driving earns your daily bread if you don’t have money to pay for the dessert. It’s great to have dessert but what matters most is to eat in the first place. If you have it, eat dessert. But the stock exchange money isn’t guaranteed. The market can take you up suddenly and then suddenly slam you down on the ground.

  ‘For example I play with the money of twenty of my friends and family. I took a sum from each of them ages ago and after that we meet at the coffeeshop where I tell them what I’m going to do. And then there’s trust. They give me money without receipts or anything. The most important thing is trust and the account at the brokerage is in my name only,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean, your account at the brokerage? I don’t know anything about this game at all,’ I asked him.

  ‘Look, to cut a long story short, you have to go open an account in your name first. Your name is coded, that’s what they call it, coded, that means it’s registered at Misr for Central Clearing, Depository and Registry. Then you see what you want to buy and sell and you tell your broker. I go and look at the stock market screen in one of the stock exchange rooms in Bourse Street downtown and I see how the market is moving and I buy and sell. In the evening I go to an Internet café to surf websites that give you the prices but a quarter of an hour late, like arabfinance.com. You put in the code for the company for which you want to know the price and away you go.’

  ‘So you’re quite the expert,’ I said.

  ‘Ask me anything, because everyone comes and ask me what to buy and what to sell.’

  ‘And do you make money for them?’ I asked.

  ‘Believe me, the other day we were all of us ruined, last Tuesday it was, a day not to forget, it was March 14. I usually drive early in the morning and at midday I go see what’s new. I found the stock market was collapsing. I had bought for my group shares in two companies – Oriental Weavers and Ezz Steel – and I found the shares kept falling. Oriental Weavers I had bought for eighty-three pounds and right in front of my eyes it kept dropping till it hit sixty-one pounds. I thought it would carry on falling. I found Ezz Steel, which I had bought at seventy-nine pounds, had fallen to fifty-five pounds. I thought: “We’re ruined for sure. The market’s collapsed and prices will keep plummeting.” I thought: “I’ll get out injured rather than lose my shirt.” I sold at a loss of about thirty percent and that day I was playing with about 30,000 pounds. I lost about 9,000 pounds in two hours.

  ‘I found my knees were shaking and I couldn’t stand up straight. I sat down at the coffeeshop and felt that I was going to die. And then I went to sleep. When I woke up, I found that prices had gone back up to where they were. Frankly, I laughed and applauded the master who played the market right. The dinosaurs are dinosaurs and the flies are flies. I’m a fly and I buzz around in order to live but that day I learned that I was playing with fire.

  ‘When the prices fell, we all sold. Did anyone buy? You tell me, who bought? I tell you, of course the people who know that prices won’t fall any more and will go back up. Where did they get the information to buy? Those are the big fish that the country stands behind. Look, when the share falls about twenty pounds and you have the info, then you step in and buy a million shares, remember that every one of these companies has over fifty million shares. And at the end of the day the share’s gone back to its original price and you go and sell, then you’ve earned twenty million pounds in three hours. Good business. In a single day they wiped out the flies who fled from the massacre and they made money for the few big fish in the game. What have you been writing down there?’

  ‘I’m writing down the numbers that you keep telling me. You’ve overwhelmed me with numbers,’ I said.

  ‘What, you want to play as well?’ asked Fouad. ‘Hand over your money and I’ll add you to my group.’

  ‘I’m not one for gambling or adventure. And between you and me, I think it’s both gambling and adventure. I also think you should submit your resignation from this business as long as the big fish are feeding.’

  ‘But that’s the way of the world,’ said Fouad. ‘For the big fish to get fat, we flies mustn’t stop buzzing, or how else would they get fat?’

  Eighteen

  I was invited with my twin sons, Bahaa and Badr, to lunch at our friend Sahar’s, and the three of us were in high spirits, in my case because Sahar is an exceptional cook, Bahaa and Badr because they were looking forward to seeing her sons. We got in a taxi and set off.

  The driver examined me thoroughly, then looked at my sons sitting in the back. I examined him too. He was a large man, like the trunk of a sycamore tree sitting beside me. His head brushed the roof of the car and the steering wheel was like a small child’s toy in his hands. His face was as if carved from stone.

  ‘Your kids of course?’ said the driver.

  ‘Yes, my kids.’

  ‘God preserve them, a blessing from God,’ he said.

  ‘God preserve you.’

  ‘God protect them for you.’

  ‘God protect you.’

  ‘How old are they?’ he asked

  ‘They’ll be ten in a few months,’ I told him.

  ‘God give them a long life,’ he said.

  I didn’t answer because I had grown tired of this broken record that might not end. But after a short silence, the driver continued.

  ‘I have a son too,’ he said.

  ‘God bless him for you.’

  ‘God be praised, God be praised. He was a gift from Our Lord. Because after I got married, we discovered we had a problem having children. We kept running here and there until after seven years God favoured us and we had Hussein. I called him Hussein after Our Master Hussein18 so he’ll walk in his footsteps.

  ‘But alas (and here the driver let out a heartfelt broken sigh), when he was four we discovered he had cancer, and now he’s lying in the Cancer Institute, and you can’t imagine how much I’ve spent on him in medical fees. It’s really exorbitant. I’ve run around everywhere to raise the money. I begged from the mosque and, God reward them, they gave me money, but it wasn’t enough. Some of the guys told me to go to the church and I told them “But I’m Muslim.” They told me to go anyhow. I went and gave them the medical reports, and they too, God reward them, gave me some money. I keep begging from everyone around me but it’s no good, his treatment costs more. His mother couldn’t take it and now she has heart trouble and she’s staying at th
e National Heart Institute as well.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ I said. ‘These things are surely sent to try us.’

  ‘God be praised for everything,’ the driver continued. ‘God safeguard your boys for you, God protect them for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And how are your son and your wife doing now?’

  ‘God preserve us all. When I go to visit him (another heartfelt sigh) in the institute, I find him jumping for joy and shouting out “My father’s come, my father’s come.” I tell you, it wrenches my heart out of my ribcage. When I hug him and take him in my arms, I say “Lord, ordain that he survive.” (He said this sentence in a sobbing tone) And his mother, I don’t know what to do for her. She has to have a heart operation. Anyway, God be praised for everything.’

  Then he looked at my boys. ‘God preserve them for you,’ he said.

  Then he looked at me, a look that implored compassion.

  I’m used to drivers of this sort, drivers who work hard to arouse your sympathy so that you give them more money. But this man had a deep effect on me, although I was certain he was probably lying and his story was completely fabricated from start to finish for the sake of a generous bonus at the end of the trip. But I was moved nonetheless. I don’t know why I was moved. Possibly because of his magnificent performance or because he was as big as a sycamore tree, possibly because an inner apprehension told me that there was a possibility, however slight, that he was telling the truth. Anyway, in the end I gave him a bonus for the Cancer Institute, the National Heart Institute and any other institute he might imagine.

  Sitting at Sahar’s house, I twitched my nose and a smoky bouquet of meat, onions and cinnamon wafted by, even permeating the pores of my skin. I felt in a state of peace and I told Sahar my story with the driver. She wasn’t surprised.

  ‘That’s a story that’s repeated often. That must have happened to me a hundred times. We’ve become a nation of beggars. You’ve never heard that?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyone who didn’t go to prison in the time of Abdel Nasser will never go to prison. Anyone who didn’t get rich in the time of Sadat will never get rich. Anyone who hasn’t begged in the time of Mubarak will never beg,’ she added.

  ‘Then count me a beggar and bring me anything to eat. I’m dying of hunger!’

  Nineteen

  It was Giza Street and it looked like the Day of Resurrection. The taxi wasn’t moving, and the pollution combined with the tedium to make time stand stiflingly still. The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine was on my left, the zoo on my right and the line of cars stretching endlessly in front of me and behind. I estimated I would reach Cinema City on Pyramids Street in two centuries’ time.

  I didn’t chat with the driver, for silence was compulsory to complete the circle of pollution and boredom. But in the end the driver decided to break the barrier of silence.

  ‘I had a guy who got out a while back who told me the Khan el-Khalili bombing19 wasn’t the work of the Islamists at all, but the government did it so people would sympathise with them against the Islamists before the presidential elections. And for your information more than one person has told me the same story. What do you think of that, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘I think that’s nonsense,’ I said. ‘A perversion of the facts and offensive. More than once over the past thirty years the Islamists have carried out such terrorist attacks, which do harm to society, and to themselves, and they keep on doing it and you can’t see why and you can’t see who’s behind it or who’s financing it. So what do you think?’ I said.

  ‘The government is weak, they don’t know how to do things like that,’ he said. ‘If they could plan that carefully we wouldn’t be in the state we’re in. To pull off political operations of that kind, you have to have daring and courage, and the planning must be sound. We wretches don’t know how to do it. Now if it was the Israeli government, then you might have believed it. But us? No, impossible.’

  ‘You mean you think that carrying out filthy attacks on civilians shows strength? What kind of talk is that?’ I said.

  ‘Politics has always been filthy,’ he said. ‘We all know that the Americans hit the Twin Towers in New York and pinned it on the Islamists. In politics the motto is “If it works, try it.” And we’re going into elections, and that means every trick is allowed. The government has to make the Islamists look like shit so people will say they are ruining the economy more than it’s already ruined.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘Are there no morals? Is there no law? Is there no constitution? You think we live in the jungle?’

  ‘Why? Where do you think we live, in a city? A jungle would be a relief compared to where we are. You know where we live?’

  ‘Where?’ I asked.

  ‘In Hell.’

  Twenty

  The parliamentary elections had ended, for better or for worse, with their habitual disasters from acts of violence. The outcome was the disappearance of all Egyptian opposition parties from the left to the right or, in short, the appearance of two opposing forces: the government and the Muslim Brotherhood, or as the newspapers called them, the outlawed Brotherhood group20.

  ‘It has to stay outlawed,’ said the driver, ‘so they can pick them up at any time if the Brothers try to push their luck. They have to stay behind the line drawn for them and if they lose their cool and get close to the line they’ll be arrested. I’ll tell you a very funny thing that happened in Tunisia, because my wife’s Tunisian. One day Ben Ali, the Tunisian president, came out and said the elections would be free and democratic, and he made all the mice come out of their holes. He then held the elections, and just a few days later arrested all the Islamists and anyone who’d gone and voted for the Islamists. Ever since then they haven’t come out of their holes. See the beauty of it? In one free election, he managed to wrap it all up.

  ‘Here I think the Brotherhood don’t intend to cross the red line and they are sticking to the rules of the game.

  ‘But frankly even if they weren’t standing in all the constituencies, they gave the National Democratic Party a tough time. The government had to cheat in several constituencies, like in Dokki with Amal Osman. Hazem Salah Abu Ismail was ahead of her, he was winning, and in the end they fiddled it and made Amal Osman win. Like what happened in Nasr City with Sallab and several other constituencies as well.

  ‘I’m originally from Fayoum, Youssef Wali’s town, and there the National Party couldn’t do a thing. The Brotherhood swept the board.

  ‘But frankly in our elections there’s a boss who fixes everything properly and everyone stays within the bounds set for them, and so we end up looking like a real democratic country. But you know what the truth is?’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘There’s no democracy in any country in the world,’ he continued. ‘Of course in our case there’s no question about it, but also abroad. In America people go to vote for two parties but in reality they are one and the same, as if here you were to go and vote for either Mubarak or Mubarak. They are the same party with two names. And in Europe it’s the same story, they all look the same. The difference between us and them isn’t in democracy, because that’s an illusion that exists only in books, but the difference is in the law. They have laws that are enforced, while we don’t. That’s the difference.

  ‘Over there they can’t say the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed and then have the Muslim Brotherhood as the only ones standing against the National Democratic Party. Over there outlawed means outlawed, while here it’s outlawed but they let them operate. By the way, that’s not just the Brotherhood. By law any one of us can be arrested, anyone.

  ‘For example if they stopped me now they would ask for my licences. If the licences are OK they would ask for the fire extinguisher. I’d get it out for them and they would say it’s too far away from you, or it’s empty or too old. Of course you couldn’t see how he knew it was empty or too old. If you clear the fire extinguishe
r, they’ll say the things hanging from the mirror. Of course every car puts things on the mirrors and that’s prohibited. If you get beyond that, they’ll say safety and roadworthiness, and for sure every car in Egypt has some small dent on it somewhere.

  ‘So in short he has a million ways to arrest you even if everything’s in order and he doesn’t like your face. He can investigate, and in the end he has the emergency law that has been around for a quarter of a century. I tell you, if they went into any house in Egypt they could dig out illegal things by the score, because with us the law’s as flexible as a giant rubber band.

  ‘In other words we’re all outlawed, and anyone in this country is in the same position as the Brotherhood. They can be picked up at any time, God protect us.’

  Twenty-one

  This

  ‘God forgive me but I don’t pray,’ said the driver. ‘I don’t even go to the mosque. I don’t have time. I work all day long. Even fasting, it’s a day here and two days there. I can’t work without smoking. But I’d seriously like to see the Muslim Brotherhood come to power. Why not? It looks like everyone wants them after the parliamentary elections.’

  ‘But if they came to power and found out you don’t pray, they’d string you up by the ankles,’ I told him.

  ‘No, because I would pray in the mosque in front of everyone.’

  ‘Why do you want them to come to power?’ I asked.

  ‘Because we’ve tried everything,’ he said. ‘We tried the king and he was no good. We tried socialism with Abdel Nasser, and even at the peak of socialism we still had bashas from the army and the intelligence. After that we tried the centre and then we tried capitalism but with government rations and a public sector and dictatorship and emergency law, and we became Americans and little by little we’ll turn into Israelis, and it’s still no good, so why don’t we try the Brotherhood and maybe they will work out, who knows?’