Taxi (English edition)

by Khaled Al Khamissi

  ‘Of course my case was exactly the same as that of the guy before me, it’s baffling. Anyway I did the test with glasses on and it went just fine. This saga took three hours in total and they told me to come to the traffic department in two days’ time.

  ‘I went on Thursday and the sun was fierce. I said: “That’s nice. My bald spot will get roasted.” I stood in the line from one end to the other and then the woman said: “Go and pay at the cash desk the fee for the computer picture.” The computer turned out to be out of order, but I paid for the computer picture anyway and I went back to the end of the line again and when I got to the front she said “we needed some tax stamps”. So I left the line and went to get some tax stamps, and then I went to the back of the line again. For all that time there was no shade from the sun or anything and by the end of it you could have fried an egg on my bald spot. Anyway I handed the papers to the woman at the desk. She looked at them and said: “You’re done, sir, everything’s in order, wait till you hear your name to get your licence, but the computer’s down so you’ll only get a temporary slip of paper.” I said: “Madam, give me anything, even if it’s written on toilet paper. What matters is that we can drive down the street with it and if anyone stops us I have something to show.” After that I waited close to two hours for someone to call my name. Nothing, and it was almost two o’clock and the civil servants were about to start leaving.

  ‘There were two of us left who hadn’t been called. The other guy was called Nader, a chubby cheery driver. We went to ask at the window and were surprised to hear that they couldn’t find our files. Nader slipped some money into her hand and said: “Try and make us a new file or anything. Do what you can.” She put the money in her bag and made two files and said: “That’s a permit for three months. If we can’t find your file, you’ll have to bring copies of your education certificates, birth certificates and all that.” I took the three-month permit and recited the Elephant Chapter of the Quran. I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘When I’m lying in bed I like to daydream: Will they find the file? Will the computer be repaired? Will I get the permit? It’s a nightmare that won’t end. Have any idea why they do this to us?’

  Fifty-eight

  Ramadan, just before the time to end the day’s fast, and I was carrying a big painting, waiting for a taxi to appear – from the sky if necessary. It was about ten minutes before iftar36 and it’s hard to find a taxi at that time. But divine intervention sent me one like an angel from the heavens. He truly was an ebony angel with black wings coming from the black south, the most beautiful part of Egypt, Aswan, with a heart that was black, the colour of purity and beauty.

  ‘The painting’s very big,’ said the driver. ‘It won’t fit on the back seat. Would you like me to tie it to the roof rack?’

  ‘We don’t have time for that if we’re to be in time for iftar,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing will happen if we’re a few minutes late,’ he said.

  The black angel got out of the taxi and fixed the picture to the roof of the car and off we went, gently and without hurry. The man was in his late fifties, with gentle features and a melodious voice.

  ‘Are you a painter?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but I was just visiting a painter friend of mine,’ I said.

  ‘Portrait or landscape?’

  ‘I really don’t know exactly. That’s a very specialised question. Are you an painter then?’ I asked.

  ‘I used to like painting a lot. Ah yes, I used to paint.’

  ‘Why “used to”? What made you stop?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ah, I’ve stopped doing lots of things. As you go along you leave things behind you and it’s impossible to go back to them. The hands of the clock only move forward.’

  ‘So you gave up painting, and then?’ I asked.

  ‘Life’s journey is long as you make your way along it. I’ve been around, travelled far and wide, been to Spain, Italy and France. I stayed in France a while and worked as a messenger in an Egyptian office. There on Sunday I used to go to the Louvre, because on Sundays it’s free. Culture for Everyone. I used to sit all day long enjoying myself. I really loved David’s painting of the Coronation of Napoleon. It has extraordinary detail and beautiful lighting effects. It’s a big painting, about ten metres by six and he painted it in 1805. But as you can see I moved on and here I am taking you to your destination.

  ‘If you like painting that much, you should paint,’ I said.

  ‘I like so many things. I waste all my money on my hobbies. I work on the taxi for a few hours then I stay at home the rest of the day and don’t ever leave it. It’s the nest where I get away from the world. I try to make it a comfortable nest. I live on the ground floor in Katameya and I have a garden in front of the house. I consider that garden my own, and I work in it every day. I’ve planted honeysuckle, hyacinth beans, dieffenbachia and bougainvillea. I’ve also planted hibiscus with red flowers. Those close by day and open again at night. I’m also fond of birds. I have a big cage with about twenty birds in it. My wife just had a big argument with me yesterday because I bought a pair of birds for 250 pounds. Those are birds that come from Brazil, really beautiful and gentle, but they won’t breed in Egypt. How could you spend all that money on a pair of birds and all that.

  ‘I also have fish tanks with fantails and guppies.’

  ‘And I’ve made an Arabian-style sitting area on the ground, surrounded by the fish tanks and the birds, and in front of me through the window there’s the garden. I feel like I’m in paradise far from the hell of Cairo.’

  ‘That sounds really beautiful,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks. You know, sir, when I’m at home I feel outside place and outside time. I watch the fish and listen to the chirping of the birds and at night I can smell the honeysuckle. You should pay me a visit some time.’

  He talked to me about plants, art, fish, birds and beauty and he was an encyclopaedia on every subject. Where did he get all this knowledge? He complained to me of his son, that he wanted to get everything without exerting any effort. He complained of his ignorance and remembered how he and his colleagues would go every evening for extra lessons in some field or other. He complained to me of how the world had made his son like this.

  In that end that black angel left the taste of sugar in my mouth and the scent of honeysuckle in my soul. He made me, for the first time in ages, have my iftar slowly, without haste, contemplating everything around me.

  In the end he made me try to make my house a nest like the one he had described. But where can I find wings like his?

  Footnotes

  1 Author’s note: Some people advised me to write that some of them take bribes, rather than all of them, as the driver said, but I didn’t take their advice because he was absolutely not in a state to talk reason or refrain from some exaggeration.

  2 ‘Kefaya’ literally means ‘enough’ in Arabic and is the unofficial name of the Egyptian Movement for Change party, which spearheaded street protest campaigns against Mubarak and his son Gamal from 2005.

  3 Up until the mid-eighties, many taxi meters were fixed to the outside of the car. A yellow duster on the meter meant that the taxi was not in service.

  4 Kawarei are cow’s trotters which is a popular dish in Egypt that is believed to have strengthening and aphrodisiac properties.

  5 Former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat (1970-1981). He was assassinated during a military parade on October 6, 1981.

  6 A three-week war also known as the October War or the Yom Kippur War. It began with a surprise attack on October 6,1973 by Egypt and Syria on Israeli forces on the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur.

  7 Gamal Abdel Nasser was one of the Free Officers that led the revolution that ousted King Farouk in 1952. Nasser was the president of Egypt from 1956-1970.

  8 Author’s note: Egypt has one of the lowest saving rates in the world. The average between 1998 and 2004 was about 13.6 percent because of the prevalence of consumer culture promoted by the media. Thi
s has hindered the growth of the Egyptian economy.

  9 Former Egyptian Prime Minster Ahmed Nazif (2004-2011) was the Minister of Communications and Information Technology in the government that preceded his.

  10 Camp David accords is the popular name for the historic peace accords forged in 1978 between Israel and Egypt at the US presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland.

  11 Mohamed Hosni Mubarak became president of Egypt after the assassination of Sadat in 1981 and lost power in February 2011 after an eighteen-day popular uprising.

  12 The Arabic equivalent of the Ottomon Turkish title ‘Pasha’, a generic term of respect for one’s social or professional superiors, meaning ‘boss’ or ‘chief’.

  13 Faragallah is a brand of preserved meats.

  14 Currency unit. A hundred piastres make one Egyptian pound.

  15 An Egyptian staple of macaroni, rice, lentils, chickpeas and fried onions in tomato sauce, often served with garlic and hot sauces.

  16 A commonly used expression that literally means ‘God willing’.

  17 Toshka is a costly and largely unsuccessful agricultural project in the Western desert, using water from Lake Nasser, the lake formed by the Aswan High Dam.

  18 Hussein is the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson and a central figure in Shia Islam.

  19 A major bazaar in the old city of Cairo and the site of a suicide attack in April 2005 that killed twenty-one people.

  20 The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest political opposition party in Egypt. It was established in 1928 and has been outlawed in Egypt since the mid-fifties. In Egypt’s 2005 elections the Brotherhood’s candidates, running as independents, won 20 percent of all seats to form the largest opposition bloc, but the movement lost all its seats in the rigged elections of 2010.

  21 Former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s widow, who has devoted herself to public service and the advancement of women’s rights.

  22 An Egyptian-American scientist who was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry.

  23 Umma Naima is a popular Egyptian folkloric song in which a young girl asks Umma Naima to help her woo the boy she fancies. Every time the girl calls out, Umma Naima replies in a kind of chorus: ‘Yes! Yes!’

  24 Made-up funny names of gangsters or thugs.

  25 The driver mentioned a particular name but a lawyer friend of mine told me to leave it out for fear that he might sue me.

  26 Yehia el-Fakharany, Adel Imam and Mohamed Henedi are famous Egyptian actors.

  27 In addition to being the name of a big football club, Zamalek is also a district in Cairo.

  28 Tokar prison, named after the northeastern Sudanese city of Tokar, is renowned as a notorious prison.

  29 one of a class of spirits that according to Islamic theology inhabit the earth, assume various forms, and exercise supernatural powers.

  30 The El-Salam Boccaccio was sailing from Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea Port of Safaga in February 2006 when it sank. More than 1,000 people died.

  31 Author’s note: Despite not following up on Tamer Hosni or Haitham’s news, I stand by the premise that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

  32 Author’s note: I hadn’t heard of this singer before the conversation and wonder if she’s a figment of the driver’s imagination. In any case, I still stand by the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

  33 Author’s note: Since no court judgment has been made against the aforementioned businessmen, then they, too, are innocent until proven guilty.

  34 Ariel Sharon, former prime minister of Israel, suffered a severe stroke in December 2006 and remains in a coma.

  35 The former Egyptian prime minister’s surname, ‘Nazif’, also means ‘clean’ in Arabic.

  36 Literally ‘breakfast’ in Arabic. It is also the meal that breaks the daily fast at sunset.

  A Note on the Translator

  Jonathan Wright is a translator of Arabic literature living in Cairo. He studied Arabic and Turkish at St John’s College, Oxford, and was a correspondent for Reuters for thirty years. His translations include Taxi by Khaled AlKhamissi, The Madman of Freedom Square by Hassan Blasim, The State of Egypt by Alaa El Aswany, Judgment Day by Rasha al-Ameer (AUC Press, Fall 2011) and Azazeel by Youssef Ziedan (Atlantic Books, early 2012).

  First published in Arabic as Taxi by

  Dar El Shorouk, Cairo 2006

  First published in English by

  Aflame Books, London 2008

  Revised English edition published in 2011 by

  Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, Doha

  This electronic edition published in 2012 by

  Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing

  Qatar Foundation

  Villa 3, Education City

  PO Box 5825 Doha, Qatar

  www.bqfp.com.qa

  Copyright © Khaled AlKhamissi, 2006

  Translation © Jonathan Wright, 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ISBN 9789992194317

  All rights reserved

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