Taxi (English edition)

by Khaled Al Khamissi

  Forty-eight

  The First Song

  ‘I’m like a fish and the taxi’s like a fish tank,’ the driver said. ‘The fish goes back and forth and the fish tank is a little prison. It bumps into the taxi window on this side and then it bumps into the window on the other side.

  ‘I too stretch out my arms and bump into the window on this side, and I stretch out my other arm and bump into the window on the other side. It’s true I drive around all day long but all I see is the inside of the taxi, my limits are the windows of the taxi.

  ‘Life imprisonment, ending in the grave.’

  The Second Song

  ‘My back’s stiff from all the sitting. When I come to stretch out at night, I can’t. My back hurts when I stretch it. And the taxi is old and has holes all over and the heat of the engine comes through on to my legs and my body in the summer. I’m like the kebab guy in front of his charcoal grill. The difference is that he smells the sweet smell of meat while I smell exhaust fumes.’

  Forty-nine

  I was in Ataba on my way to the Pyramids district. I thought I’d ride the metro to Giza and then take a taxi to the Pyramids. The weather was very hot and it was July, and I had been browsing in the Ezbekia bookshops (what used to be called the Ezbekia Wall), bookshop by bookshop to buy a book about crafts in Pharaonic Egypt as a present for my wife, but I couldn’t find it. I went down into the metro station and came across a large sign reading ‘The Metro Underground: Mubarak’s Gift to His People’. It really is a nice present. Here I was coming to Ezbekia to save a few pennies, and I wondered how much Mubarak paid for this metro. And in which market in France did he find it to buy it and bring it for his people?

  It’s infuriating. All year long the government has been talking about pluralism and democracy and the first multi-candidate presidential elections, and at the same time some unknown person writes in the metro that the president owns the state’s property and uses it to buy presents for his retinue, otherwise known as His People. Contradictions enough to give you apoplexy. We have to swallow stupidity pills to accept everything they tell us.

  This sign really irritated me, especially as the day before I had seen another sign reading: ‘Yes, O Noble Mubarak, Yes, O Noble Lord Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, You Who Have the Support of God the Lord of the Universe and of Our Master Mohammed, May God Pray for Him and Grant Him Peace, O Purest Son of the Offspring of Your Ancestors Ali Ibn Abi Taleb, Fatima the Radiant and Chaste and Our Master Hussein, and so on . . .’ We have descended into nonsense.

  I got off the metro in Giza and took a taxi. There were banners around us on every side saying ‘Yes’ to the referendum for us to change the constitution to make it more pluralist, but at the same time: ‘Yes to Mubarak.’ The people were really confused. They felt they couldn’t just say yes to changing the constitution. They were afraid, poor things, that maybe they had to say yes to Mubarak too. We drove on and I saw a banner reading: ‘The baby in its mother’s womb . . . says Yes to Mubarak.’

  ‘What do you think of all these banners?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, the nicest one I’ve seen said: “A unanimous yes to Mohamed Hosni Mubarak and Mubarak’s son and the son of Mubarak’s son,”’ he said.

  ‘So it’s a republican monarchy with extra toppings. What do you think?’

  ‘What does Mubarak have to do with these banners? It’s the fault of people who put them up. Frankly my view is that Mubarak’s not to blame. The man’s doing everything he can. He deserves his job. And besides, who would agree to take part in elections against a few people who aren’t worth a cent? He’s been president of the republic for coming on a quarter century, and before that he was vice president. I mean, he’s a guy who fully understands the job, tried and tested and up to the position. For the sake of democracy he agrees to run in elections against people who have no experience. My God, no one would do that. I mean, Sadat for example, would he have agreed to do that? Impossible. And who thought up this idea? It was Hosni Mubarak as well. You know where that man’s greatness comes from?’

  ‘From where?’ I asked.

  ‘Because he’s originally a pilot. A pilot has to be smart and alert all the time and very focused. If he nods off for a moment, it’s instant death. There’s no room for error. That’s why Mubarak is 100 percent. Focused all the time and he understands what he wants to do. It’s enough what he’s done in Cairo – with flyovers, tunnels and so on. It’s amazing. You know in the eighties the streets were more crowded than they are now, and look how the number of cars has grown since then. The man’s done a great job, and after all that he’s agreed to run in elections with a bunch of nobodies. By God, he’s good for us.’

  ‘But I was irritated with him today when I saw a sign in the metro saying that the metro was Mubarak’s gift to his people,’ I said.

  ‘So what’s wrong with that?’ said the driver. ‘The metro was Mubarak’s idea anyway and it solved a massive transport problem for people. Did you know that more than a million people ride the metro every day? Didn’t I tell you there’s no one to match Mubarak? Now where did you say you were going?’

  Fifty

  ‘In a hurry?’ the driver asked me. ‘I have to fill up with gas.’ I said I wasn’t, but I wasn’t at all expecting the endless queue of cars waiting at the station. There wasn’t a single private car in the line, only taxis of every shape and form. The queue stretched back like a black-and-white striped snake starting at the gas station and ending by us in the street, at least fifty yards away from the station. You could safely describe the speed at which the line was moving as slow.

  ‘What’s the story with the gas?’ I asked.

  ‘Natural gas is much cheaper than petrol,’ said the driver. ‘It works out at about half the price. For us as taxi drivers it’s a major saving. We drive at least 150 kilometres a day and a Peugeot 504 like mine burns lots of petrol. It makes a big difference for me.’

  ‘But I heard that it costs thousands of pounds to install,’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s all done on instalments. Whenever you fill up you pay a small extra sum until you find you’ve paid off the whole amount. Personally I bought the system secondhand from another taxi. The owner was going off to work in the Emirates and he sold it to me for 900 pounds cash.’

  The queue hadn’t moved much and we found the drivers gathered to the side of the station, leaving their taxis in the line and waiting for others to fill up in the station so they could move up in the queue. We got out, the driver and I, to join the other drivers, who were in a state of incessant collective laughter.

  ‘They found tons of Viagra at the port in a consignment of ceramics. The advert on the radio tomorrow is: “Ceramics with Viagra, so that women can make their men lick the tiles!”’ one of the drivers said.

  Everyone roared with laughter and another driver quickly chipped in:

  ‘Dosage for using Viagra: With a girl you’re seeing for the first time, no need. With the woman you love, half a pill. With your girlfriend, one pill. With your wife, six pills, ten beers and three whiskeys, two joints of hashish, one of grass – and God help you, it may work or it may not!’

  The roars of laughter rose to the heavens and one of the drivers quickly jumped in, before anyone else had a chance. ‘There was a guy from Upper Egypt whose father dies. He went and took some Viagra and they said: “What are you going that for, you madman?” “In these difficult times,” the man said, “I need someone to stand up for me.”’

  ‘You know what a taxi driver who takes a lot of Viagra writes on his trouser zip?’ responded one driver.

  ‘Caution: Steep hill ahead.’

  The driver next to me burst into hysterical laughter. Everyone looked at him before one of them followed with another joke.

  ‘A taxi driver was fed up with his wife, so he put an ad saying: “For exchange, one wife in good condition, factory-made interior, electric breast fenders, tubeless thighs, done 10,000, on blocks five years.”’

  The
driver laughed so much he collapsed on the ground. Another jumped on top of him, grabbed his hair and shouted in his face: ‘Pull yourself together!’ Then they stood up, both laughing, and a group of drivers walked away to move their cars up the line towards the station.

  Then a new round of jokes began.

  ‘Know what’s the best present you can get your wife? A ticket on el-Salam ferry to Safaga!’ one of them said.

  ‘OK, you know the theory behind marriage?’ said another. ‘Before the wedding, you speak and she listens. After the wedding, she speaks and you listen. After three years of marriage, you both speak and everyone else listens.’

  Hysterical laughter broke out and a new batch of drivers joined us, leaving their taxis in the queue. One of them started to tell a joke: ‘Here’s the news 100 years from now: “Hossam Hassan will receive the Africa Cup of Nations from President Luay Haitham Gamal Hosni Mubarak, and the condition of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon34 is improving.”’

  Everyone guffawed and our turn came to move the taxi forward to fill up. As we were walking to the car, I heard one of the drivers say: ‘Listen to this very Egyptian joke: There was a monkey in the jungle who saw some tigers running and a donkey running behind them. The money asked the donkey: “Why are you running?” and it said: “They say they’re going to arrest the tigers.” So the monkey asked him: “What’s that to do with you?” “It’ll take ages to prove I’m not a tiger!’”

  I laughed wholeheartedly and thanked the driver for this break, because I hadn’t taken part in such a collective laughter session for a long time, a very long time.

  I decided that whenever I was at a loss what to do, I would come to this station and share some laughs with the taxi drivers – loud silly laughs, laughs from the belly and definitely not from the heart.

  Fifty-one

  ‘So what are we going to eat?’ the driver said. ‘I have no idea. Meat’s too expensive and not just expensive but it’s got foot and mouth disease. Fish is doubly expensive. It was chicken we used to live on and cook with its broth. Frankly I don’t know what we’re going to eat.’

  ‘They say cook the chicken well and the bird flu virus dies,’ I suggested.

  ‘You only have one life!’ said the driver. ‘So the virus will die and what’s to guarantee I won’t too? Because you can’t imagine what happened where we live. It was a disaster. I live in the Segn Youssef area near Sakkara and we were the first area in all of Egypt attacked by bird flu before the big scare. We have several poultry farms around us and thousands of chickens have died. We got in touch with the government and it seems they hadn’t prepared themselves yet so they told us “We can’t do anything for you, go burn them.” And that’s exactly what happened.’

  ‘You burned them?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course the idiots around us, instead of burning them or burying them, they took the dead chickens and threw them in the irrigation canal. Stupidity like I’ve never seen before or after. But that’s what happened. They said: “Are we really going to burn them? Are we really going to dig trenches and bury them? No, that would be too much trouble.”’

  ‘After that the stories started about the water being polluted and if we drank it we would die of flu. You know what this country’s like for rumours and how meek and cautious people are, and I’m the first of them of course.

  ‘And wherever you walk down our way you’ll find chicken feathers everywhere because when they were throwing them out the wind blew away the feathers. Then they said the feathers were dangerous, but thank God no one’s caught bird flu in our neighbourhood.’

  ‘May God protect us,’ I said.

  ‘So do you know what someone with bird flu feels?’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘He feels like a chicken in front of his wife, and in the bedroom he’ll feel that his wings have been clipped.’ The driver chuckled. ‘But the trouble is you feel like that even without bird flu,’ he added. ‘Honest to God!’

  Fifty-two

  Blah blah blah blah blah blah . . .

  Then the driver looked back to have a good look at my face.

  ‘You look like a decent type,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Everything I’ve told you was just bullshit, I’m afraid, but I’ll speak to you frankly so you get the picture. If I could, I’d kill you right now and take everything you have. I’d do it right away. If I was arrested, it wouldn’t matter much to me, at least in prison I’d find someone to feed me.’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘My God, I tell you, I’m living like a dead man. No, a dead man’s much better off than me. I work two shifts and at the end of the month I’m still about 100 pounds in debt. I tell you, sir, a bull lives a thousand times better than us!’

  The driver was a young man of about twenty-five or a little less and he went on talking rapidly. ‘You know those kids who blew themselves up in el-Hussein and in Tahrir Square?’ he said. ‘Those kids are top notch. Don’t believe they’re terrorists. They’re a bunch of poor kids who saw where things are going, I mean, they saw things properly and they realised that death was much better than this son-of-a-bitch life we lead.’

  ‘Not to that extent!’ I said, trying to calm him down.

  ‘Not to that extent? Haha. You know, if suicide wasn’t prohibited, everyone I know would have committed suicide ages ago. Those kids did something right. They wanted to kill two birds with one stone. They killed themselves and thought they would go to heaven as well. Nothing else matters. The story that they were part of an Islamist group and that stuff, that’s all lies.’

  After a short silence, the driver started shouting in my face. ‘Those were wretched kids. Even the bomb, poor things, they didn’t know how to make. It had a few nails you’d buy at the hardware shop for two or three pounds. What kind of group is that, that doesn’t know how to make anything, poor things?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘They knew how, and they’re wrecking the Egyptian economy.’

  The driver looked at me with disgust. ‘What economy, sir?’ he said. ‘We’re famined (I assume he meant famished). We went broke ages ago. We’ve hit rock bottom. Besides, people don’t do anything in this country other than steal from each other. That’s the economy.’

  ‘I’m getting out on the right here,’ I said.

  The driver stopped the car. ‘You don’t know how a nail bomb’s made, do you?’ he continued. ‘Between you and me, I want to end it all at the next stop and go straight to heaven.’

  I hurried out of the taxi, to be slapped in the face by a hot blast of air from the polluted street.

  Fifty-three

  ‘Aren’t you planning to stand for election after the change in the constitution and become president of the republic?’ I asked the driver. ‘You must know half the people in the country from driving around all day long.’

  The driver laughed like a man weighed down by the burdens of humanity and of the more than sixty years that he must have lived, judging by the wrinkles on his face.

  ‘So you’re planning to vote for Hosni Mubarak?’ I said.

  ‘He doesn’t like me. Why should I like him?’ he answered, in all seriousness.

  ‘Why doesn’t he like you?’ I asked.

  He looked at me and asked: ‘Do you have a million pounds?’

  ‘No,’ I answered, taken aback.

  ‘Then he doesn’t like you either. That man only likes people who have more than a million pounds.’

  ‘It’s not a question of liking,’ I said. ‘You’re not marrying him, you’re going to choose the person who’s best for the country.’

  ‘For me to vote for him, I have to like him, apart from the fact that I haven’t voted in my life and I don’t have a voting card, and I don’t even know anyone who has a voting card. You know, after my long life, I’ve never seen anyone with a voting card. Do you have a voting card?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘What happens is
a few village heads and the directors of government offices round up by force the peasants or the government workers to vote, to earn a little extra money. In the end it’s a business. If you want the truth, the few people who blindly go and vote, not one of them is going of his own accord, except for a few millionaire thieves who do it for business.’

  ‘You seem a little pessimistic about the world,’ I remarked.

  ‘I swear,’ he said angrily. ‘Out of the 70 million Egyptians, there’s not one who votes willingly except, as we agreed, the millionaires.’

  ‘So you don’t like the government?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you like the government?’ he asked.

  ‘To be honest, I think that Prime Minister Nazif is a man with very clean hands35 and we haven’t had anyone with such clean hands in a long time,’ I said.

  ‘He’s a foreigner,’ the driver said.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s Canadian, and he went to swear the oath there in Canada.’

  ‘I haven’t heard that story,’ I said.

  ‘Come on, how come you don’t know that? He’s Canadian, I tell you, Canadian. Hosni Mubarak chose a Canadian prime minister for us. After the elections, I hope, which Hosni Mubarak will win of course, he’ll get us an American instead called Johnnie Walker!’

  Fifty-four

  I asked the driver to drop me off by the television building at Maspero. His face lit up and he asked if I worked in television. When I told him that I didn’t, he didn’t give up.

  ‘But you must know someone there?’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I answered.

  ‘Because I urgently need to see Mufid Fawzi the presenter, very urgently,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure it’s something really urgent?’

  ‘This isn’t something for me,’ the driver said. ‘It’s for the country. Because I want to tell him that every morning half the passengers I pick up I take to the Cancer Institute. It’s very strange. As soon as I drop one off at the institute, I drive around a bit and find another passenger going to the institute. It’s clear the whole country has cancer.