Inter-Taxi Chit-Chat

Cairo, Egypt

I don't ride around in taxis in America, so I don't know if this is just taxi driver culture, or specific to Arab taxi driver culture, but there are lots of conversations that go on between the open windows of taxis stuck in traffic. Especially Cairo traffic, and especially in the complete disaster that surrounds Tahrir Square for several blocks around.

Often drivers lean out their windows to ask a taxi driver for directions. Sometimes they're checking traffic conditions. "Is it better to go this way or that way?" In these exciting times, they talk more and more about politics, too. I noticed today that a great many taxis have "25 January" stickers on their cars; there are the ones that look like license plates, banners with the faces of the martyrs, "I was there" stickers, Egyptian flags, and more.

Today my driver spent half his time screaming invectives out his window: "You ass!" or "That's my spot, man!" He was definitely not loving his job today.

As we were sitting in traffic in front of the Arab League Headquarters, there was a small protest on the sidewalk. The driver on the other side of us asked, "Is that a protest for Libya?" That was the topic of protests in that spot last week. "No," said my driver, "that flag is for Iraq." Replied the other driver, "Whatever do they want in Iraq?" Said my driver, "God only knows! Some beans for their bread, maybe? The whole world is falling apart!"

It was a common refrain from him after that. The whole world is falling apart. And sometimes it seems that way in Egypt post-revolution. As I commiserated with my driver, Tahrir Square was a traffic disaster before the revolution. Now it's a place taxi drivers avoid whenever possible. Before picking up me, he turned down three fares to the same neighborhood because they would entail crossing Tahrir as he did with me. As a result, he gets angry, and I feel guilty and overpay for my ride. Having classes in Zamalek is getting damned expensive!

But it wasn't all politics. Along the way, as we were waiting on a corner for our turn to go around Tahrir Square, he shouted out his window for a cup of tea from a street vendor.

One-Track Minds!

Egypt, Cairo

I've had 3 conversations in Arabic this week, two with taxi drivers, one with the plumber. They all came back to the same topic: sex. Surprise, surprise, I know!

But it's a little (just a little!) more complicated than that. It starts out as a conversation about relationships more generally.

"Is it true that Americans really have boyfriends and girlfriends, just like that?" Cairo is notorious in the Arab world for the growing number of boy-girl relationships you can find here. Find any bridge over the Nile at and after sunset, and you'll find dozens of these couples, holding hands and talking. But it's controversial.

"And your parents know? They don't disapprove?" This is the real sticking point for Cairenes - and Jordanians, for that matter. Despite the rising prevalence of dating, it's almost always done clandestinely. It's okay for men to date, but it's a terrible shame on the family for a girl to be involved in a relationship, however chaste, before marrying. In fact, it can get her killed by family members.

"And American couples ... they have sex?" Because this is the most baffling thing of all about Americans and Europeans dating before marriage. Virginity is still a highly prized commodity in the Arab world, so much so that girls will spend thousands of dollars to have their hymens restored before marriage, just to avoid any hint of shame.

"And what if there's a baby? Whose name will they give it?" Not who will take care of it, but whose name will the baby take. Perhaps one question is a proxy for the other, but it's an indication of the vital importance of family ties, of paternity and acknowledgment in Arab culture.

They're interesting conversations, for sure ... but not conversations I want to keep having with my cab drivers!

Life As a Taxi Driver

Cairo, Egypt

Today in our colloquial Arabic class we were introduced to Rida', who has worked for 20 years as a taxi driver in Cairo.  We were invited to ask the questions we've always wanted to know the answers to.

Initially he became a taxi driver because when he finished his Associates Degree he had the option to work in an office somewhere, but could make a lot more money driving a cab. This is no longer true, he says; there are now many jobs that make a lot more money than a taxi driver. Still, the money is better than many. Rida' drives a split shift with the owner of the taxi. Rida' drives 6 hours in the morning, and the owner drives 6 hours in the afternoon. He pays the owner a flat fee of LE60 (about $12) per day, plus the cost of the gas (he has to returned the car with a full tank at the end of a shift), and the rest of what he makes is his to keep. Sometimes that's LE50, sometimes it's LE100 or more in a day. Considering that many Egyptians make LE300-400 or less per month, it's not a bad living. Nevertheless, he's pushing his 3 sons to go to university and choose some other profession.

Rida' has a Class A commercial drivers license, so he can drive anything, and in the afternoons he drives a full size bus. In the past several years, he's also driven buses on Hajj to Mecca and Medina. I can't imagine the stress of that event. As he describes it, everywhere you go on Hajj, as many as 3 million Muslims are going the same way at the same time, by bus or on foot.

But the best question, I think, was when our student teacher Mahmoud said, "I drive in this city for just half an hour and I'm impossibly frustrated, and I don't have to deal with customers who sometimes try to rip me off. How do you keep your cool for 6 hours in this job?"

For Rida', it was a matter of faith.  He recited for us some of the dhikr, or invocations, that he uses to remind himself of the bigger picture. He was quite mellow and philosophical about it. Sometimes, he said, people did pay him far less than the trip was worth, but in his experience it wasn't worth getting upset over, because every customer who cheats him is followed by an overly generous tip, like the man who paid him LE50 for a LE20 ride.

Someone else asked him who were better customers: rich people or poor people? He looked quite embarrassed by his answer, knowing that by Egyptian standards his whole audience were rich people. Unfortunately, he said, rich people were more likely to underpay or fail to tip, and it's the poorer people who are more likely to give tips of 50% or more. He also said that sometimes a customer will stop him and say that they need a ride but have no money, and as long as they ask before they get into the cab, he generally gives them a ride.

There were many other interesting tidbits in the conversation, but I'd call those the highlights.

Taxi Drama

Amman, Jordan

I have, as my mother pointed out, been having a rash of blog-worthy taxi encounters recently. This is pretty unusual for me these days in Jordan. When I was here as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I must've had a more American accent or look, because people would immediately pick me out as a foreigner, and I had a lot of both interesting and uncomfortable encounters with taxi drivers. Now, though they may still think I look like a foreigner, the moment I speak Arabic with my heavy Bedouin accent, I guess people assume I must be Jordanian, or at least married to one. For taxi drivers, I think this means they don't speak to me anymore because they're afraid of what my family might do to them if they do.

Before I left with the Peace Corps, my mother said to me, "In Jordan, people will never mistake you for a native like they did in Switzerland." And maybe, at first glance, that's true. But it's more than a family joke that Jordan is the Switzerland of the Peace Corps, or the Switzerland of the Middle East. Just as the Swiss don't seem to believe that Swiss German can be learned as a second language, it also doesn't seem to occur to most Jordanians that I might have learned Bedouin dialect as a second language. Most foreigners only speak fuS7a, what you might call Al-Jazeera Arabic, which isn't anyone's native language.) They're so confused, they just treat me like an Arab.

Most of the time. Then occasionally I get taxi drivers like this morning. I get in the cab and tell him where I want to go. He starts to drive away, and then says, "Five dinar, right?" It rarely costs me more than JD 1.75.
"No!" I say in outrage. "By the meter, or you can let me out right here!"
"But you'll give me a half dinar tip, right?" Though not quite illegal, tipping is strongly discouraged by the Jordanian government. Still, I earn a very lucrative salary by Jordanian standards, and while it's just enough to cover my student loans back home, the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer in me feels guilty, and I usually tip generously. Unless taxi drivers try to rip me off, in which case I hardly feel that a penny extra is warranted! So I say, "Of course not! I come and go this route every day by the meter!"
And then, inevitably, the guy's got no clue where he's going, but when I give him directions, he either sneers at me in the rearview or tells me I'm wrong....

Just a Bit More Bad Luck

Dulles International Airport, Washington, DC, USA

From My White Wintery Hell

I spent all morning hoping my flight might be cancelled and might be able to stay until Tuesday, crash Karla's Valentine's Day, and take the CASA exam on Tuesday morning.

When it became clear that my flight would really leave, I spent all afternoon trying to figure out how to get to Dulles. The Metro wasn't running. Even if it had been, the Metro bus to Dulles wasn't running. Neither was the Washington Flyer nor the Airport Shuttle. I could get a cab from Alexandria, but if I took the bus to Ballston I could save almost $15. Rachel and her friend said they'd seen the bus to Ballston, so that was the plan.

From My White Wintery Hell

I dragged my suitcase, carry-on and backpack full of books for my supervisor's PhD over the snow to the main road. At 6pm it looked pretty much like it looked at noon:

From My White Wintery Hell

But the longer I stood in the dark and the slush on the corner, waiting for a bus that might not come, contemplating the prospect of schlepping all my luggage on and off the bus.... I started to feel like $15 maybe wasn't so much money after all. I called a taxi.

When the taxi arrived, he was playing Arabic music. He loaded in my bags and as soon as we were off, he flipped the dial for the radio. "Oh, I liked the Arabic music!" I said. "It reminds me of ... home."
He gave me an odd look and said, with an unmistakably Arab accent, "Where are you from?"
"Well, I'm from Pennsylvania, but right now I live in Jordan. That's where I'm going, actually."
"Really?" he says. "I'm from Jordan!" And an intensely homesick Jordanian, too. So we chatted about home, until his car started making funny noises. He pulled over onto the shoulder of I395 and called his brother to take me the airport (such an Arab!). When his brother was busy, he called his friend, but he couldn't come either. That was when I started to notice the cab filling up with really foul rubber-smelling smoke. "Look," says my driver, "I'll take you down to the Pentagon Metro station and get you another cab. I'm not even going to charge you for this ride." He was very sweet, poor guy, and found a cab from his own company down at the Metro and handed me and my bags over.

My second cab driver was from Eritrea, a country about which I know very little except that there's apparently a significant Eritrean community in Amman (many of them cousins of a Peace Corps friend, in fact). I learned all kinds of things. I had no idea that Eritrea was a mainly Christian country, for example, and that there's a lot of Italian mixed into the local languages, left over from the colonial era.

And though it cost me a fortune, I made it to the airport in just the perfect amount of time to check in, get through security, and arrive at the gate a mere 10 minutes before boarding.

...And Now I Love Israel!

Amman, Jordan

I had another fascinating conversation with a taxi driver this morning. Almost immediately he announced that he was Palestinian. This isn't surprising, as most taxi drivers are.

Then he told me he'd been recently kicked out of Israel/Palestine, and would have to stay away for 6 years. I didn't ask why. I mean, what do you say to that kind of statement? ...smile and nod...

Then he told me that his daughter was in the hospital. This I do know how to respond to! Allah yasa3adha! (God help her!)

Then the real drama began. When his daughter was well enough to go home, the hospital announced that he owed them 1,000 dinar for her care and stay at the hospital. He was a taxi drive, so of course he didn't have JD1,000, but he offered all he had, and promised to return with the rest within a week to 10 days. Not good enough, said the hospital; they refused to release his daughter until his bill was paid, while adding to his bill for every day she stayed in the hospital. Can you believe it? Holding his own daughter as collateral? And charging him for it. At a hospital! It took him another 2 days to beg and borrow the money from friends and family, at who knows what additional cost to him.

Now, this is the good part: Here's a Palestinian who's been kicked out of his home by the Israeli government, forced to move his whole family to Jordan and build a new life for himself. And yet he said to me, "As much as I suffer at the hands of the Israeli government, the people of Israel are so much nicer than the Jordanians. In Israel, I wouldn't have paid a cent for that hospital stay; the Israeli government would have paid for the whole ordeal automatically. I wish I were back in Israel. I love Israel!"

And as I was telling this story, I was thinking how like America this is. In fact, I mentioned that to him: that Americans are talking a lot back home about how many people go bankrupt from healthcare costs. He knew exactly what I was talking about, too.

NHS Bliss
On a similar note, there's been much scrutiny of the details of our company healthcare policy in the office this week, and British Melanie is appalled at the things that are not covered. Every time she brings it up, I think, It looks like a pretty good policy to me. Just like your average American healthcare policy....

Taxi Talk

Amman, Jordan

On my way to my English conversation class in the refugee camp this afternoon, I had a fabulous, unexpected conversation with a taxi driver.

Recently, as my Arabic gets better, taxi drivers are less and less likely to speak to me. I think this is because of my Bedouin accent. People often now mistake me for actually being Bedouin, and I imagine taxi drivers are afraid of what my brothers and cousins will do to them if they strike up a conversation with me.

This taxi driver, though, when he found out that I was going to Jebel Nathif, where he himself lives, did strike up a conversation. He asked me how long I'd been in Jordan, and when I said almost 4 years, he said, "It must be for love." This is pretty common. People often think the only reason to want to live in Jordan is because you've married a Jordanian. When I explained that it was actually for Arabic, he asked, "Don't you like Arab men?"

Now, this is a tricky question. I'm friends with many Arab men, and in any case, I wouldn't want to paint a whole group of people with just one brush. Still, I find it difficult to become romantically interested in Arab men, and today something made me want to be brutally honest. "I spent too much time in the Irbid bus station to want much to do with most Arab men."

This really got him started, and not in the way I expected. "It's true," he said. "Most Arab men want something from foreign women, something they can buy all over the city, as I'm sure you know. If it's not that, then they want something else, like a Green Card or some other way out of Jordan or a woman who can support them financially."

Now, if I say this to most Jordanians, they'll agree, but I can't remember a Jordanian ever volunteering this information unprompted before. In fact, it was such an interesting conversation, I didn't even mind that he missed his turn and had to take me around the block to get me to my destination!

Obama Is a Taxi Driver

Amman, Jordan

I've had great luck with taxi drivers this week. Yesterday, my German got a good workout with a delightful man who had lived for years in various German cities. This morning, as I was getting out of one taxi, the driver said, "You're not a foreigner, are you?" I nodded. "But your Arabic...!" I love these moments, and this one prompted me to remember something my mother said before I went into the Peace Corps. "This won't be like Europe," she said. "No matter how well you speak or how appropriately you dress, no one will ever mistake you for an Arab!" Au contraire! It happens every few weeks this time around.

It was another taxi driver, though, who gave me one of the best political analogies I've ever heard. It didn't start out auspiciously. I got in the cab and told him I wanted to go to Quds College. He asked, "Do you go there often?" I replied, "I work there!" Then we discovered that my supervisor had taken his cab out to the college twice. "So you're English?" he asked. "No, I'm American." Then there was a pause. Finally, the cab driver said, "Things are better in America now. It was really bad with Bush." We hashed this out for awhile, and then he seemed to change the subject:

Now, I'm a taxi driver, he said. I drive this taxi not just for my own amusement but to provide for my family. My wife and my children depend on the money I make driving this taxi. Can I do whatever I want, go wherever I want, run other people off the road? No! I'll wreck my taxi, I'll get in trouble. Can I say whatever I want to my customers? Can I shout at them, tell them what to do and where to go? No! I'd lose all my business that way. This is what it's like to be the American President. He has to respect other people, other countries, other people, or he ruins his country and everyone else's.

Medina-tain of the Decapolis

Jerash and Umm Qais, Jordan

Today we hired a driver and I took Philip north to 2 cities of the Roman Decapolis, the league of 10 cities that were economic and military strongholds on the edge of the Roman Empire in Palestine. I love Petra, and there are so many things there I still haven't done. Still, I find the cities of the north of Jordan more compelling to me. In part, perhaps, it's because I know so much less about them now. Perhaps it's because the mobs of tourists are slightly less. And in the case of Umm Qais, it's definitely the old adage: Location! Location! Location!

From Philip Goes North

Umm Qais

This is my favorite place in Jordan. The view is just amazing: the Yarmouk River Valley, the Syrian Golan, the Israeli Golan, Lake Tiberius (aka Sea of Galilee), the city of Tiberius, Israel, the Jordan River Valley ... you feel like you're standing on top of the world. Add to that the delicious food at the restaurant there, and Philip's fabulous company, and you've got a perfect day! We wandered about in the ruins down the street of columns to the west, too, found the mosaic floor hidden back in the weeds, and some beautiful flowers. This is the best time to visit the northwest of Jordan, because even with the stingy little bit of rain we've gotten this year, the whole Irbid/Ajlun region just explodes with greenery and flowers, like the kind of spring-time I'm used to from the American northeast.

From Philip Goes North

Jerash

Jordanians must have gotten over the little Danish cartoon fiasco, because the Danish-Jordanian archaeology partnership in Jerash seems to be alive and well. Philip and I discovered a number of things that I'm absolutely certain weren't there even as recently as when I came to Jerash with CLS at the end of June. For one, there was this whole Byzantine church next to the Hippodrome and Hadrian's Arch, with this pristine mosaic floor, and I swear it wasn't there before!

Perhaps the most refreshing thing was our timing. We arrived in Jerash in late afternoon, a time at which I'd never visited the Roman ruins there, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of Jordanian families lounging in the grass around the park, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and dramatically warmer weather.

From Philip Goes North

Rediscovering Jordan

It's actually been very nice in quite a few ways to be travelling around with Philip (even if people keep mistaking him for my husband!) and doing the tourist thing. Sometimes in Amman, between work and my social life, I almost forget that I'm in Jordan, especially now that my work schedule keeps me from visiting the village. Even cycling with Tareef, while it gets me out of Amman to parts of Jordan I've never seen before, often feels more like California than the Middle East. But with Philip around, I have an excuse to spend a little more money and get out into the country. In fact, our lovely driver Waseem almost has me convinced to sit for the tour guide examinations to become a licensed Jordanian tour guide. I love my job at Bell, but some weeks I feel like I may as well be in Bulgaria or China or anywhere, I use so little Arabic and have so little contact to "real" Jordanian life.

So, please, come visit me in Jordan! Philip, Auntie Viv and my parents will all testify that I'm an excellent trip planner and tour guide, and I only get better with more practice!

What Do You Mean, No Bus?

Wadi Musa -> Ma'an -> Amman, Jordan

This morning we got up nice and early to see the highlight of the Petra National Park: the Monastery! In the interest of time, I convinced poor Philip to take a donkey up the mountain. He may never forgive me! But it really was beautiful up there, wrapped to the ears in our new kaffiya, taking pictures, chatting with a young Belgian photographer who was waiting for a second day for the perfect light.

Then we walked back down, passing Miriam on her way back up, and had just enough time to see the highlights of the Roman City before we hoofed it back up to the entrance so we'd make it on to the JETT bus by 4 o'clock. But when we got there, we discovered that there was no JETT bus today. The morning bus down from Amman couldn't make it, because the Shobak road was still closed, so there was no bus to take us back up to Amman. By this time, it was too late to find a public bus back to Amman, either. Instead, the bus parking lot manager offered to drive us to Ma'an, where we could catch a bus to Amman. We agreed.

Now, while I (and many other Peace Corps Volunteers and other expats who live more than 4km from the so-called "Fortress America") think that the American embassy tends to be overly-cautious about their warnings, I do lend some credence to their warning about Ma'an. Not only is it known for its "radical Islamist leanings," a term I'm always suspicious of, but also for its anti-governmental riots: bread riots, Tawjihi riots.... Even my archaeologist friend, who's well known and well respected in Wadi Musa and the south of Jordan, recommends that non-Arab women going to Ma'an cover their hair. And when we got to the bus station in Ma'an, the parking lot manager recommended that Philip let me do the talking, and that I stick to my Bedouin Arabic. And it seems to have been successful, because when we finally arrived in Amman, the young guys who'd been sitting next to us even stood around in the pouring rain to help us find a cab at a reasonable price. So I guess the embassy was wrong again.

"no like america"

Amman, Jordan

My colleagues and I were, as usual, sharing a taxi back from work this evening, and chatting about some harmless subject related to our teaching. I had given the directions to the cab driver in Arabic, though he insisted on speaking to us in his very broken English. About half way into Amman, he asked, "You American?"
Before I could reply, John jumped right in. "No, no. British. Well, British and American. Two British, one American."
The cab driver said, "No like America." He had to say it twice before we understood it. There was a moment of silence before John turned to Martha and continued whatever innocuous conversation we'd been having. I don't know how they felt, but I felt extremely awkward.

What's a girl to say? I ask this as a rhetorical question, but it's not really rhetorical. What is a girl supposed to say to that? I'm not going to say, "I don't like America, either," even though that's how my Nana thinks I feel. I do like America. I'm a big fan of Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, George Washington and the two-term presidency, Ralph Waldo Emerson and "The American Scholar," Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dream, John F. Kennedy and the Peace Corps, and the other noble ideals with which the United States of America has been built. I wouldn't want to have been born anywhere else, because being an American opens doors to me that aren't open to so many other people around the world.

But I sympathize with America's detractors. A friend asked me today why my G-chat status message read "Maryah can fly her country's flag again with a clear conscience." I've never been a great fan of patriotic gestures, but since 9/11 and the dictatorial, damn-the-consequences cowboy diplomacy of the Bush Administration, I've shuddered every time I've seen an ostentatious show of American patriotism. For the last seven years, the United States hasn't had a government I could be proud of, or that I even really wanted to be associated with.

But today on BBC I've seen clips of President Obama's appearance on Al-Arabiya television network, saying that too often America dictates what other countries should do without knowing all the relevant factors, and that this new administration is prepared to listen first, and not make decisions until all the factions have been consulted. (Much has been made of the fact that he still won't talk to Hamas, but he does support Egypt's talks with Hamas, and we can't expect too much so soon.) I can't tell you how impressed I am that our new president, despite the pressing domestic issues like economic crisis, health care, lobbying reform and transparency reform, has taken the time out of his very first week in office to address the Arab people directly, and in such self-effacing tones. In addition, I've been listening to the Secretary of the Arab League and other regional spokespersons express their delight at the appointment of George Mitchell as the Obama Administration's Middle East Envoy, and praise him as someone who listens. Finally, the United States has leadership that I can believe in, that I am comfortable being associated with.