EGYPT: Potato chips, cellphones and bad drivers
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
The guy in the car in front of me is jabbering on his cellphone, but that doesn’t concern me as much as the bag of potato chips he’s holding in his other hand. He tilts his head back, gobbles some chips and keeps talking; his car meandering across the road like a wayward firefly. To drive in Cairo is to know exasperation. It is to dodge potholes, ripped, rippled roads and battered cars that creak, rattle and shimmy. It is to know the depths of angst and come out laughing because, really, what unfolds beyond your windshield cannot be real, it must be an unnerving dream drenched in exhaust fumes, heat and overturned trucks of splattered watermelons. And horns. Egyptians don’t brake, they beep. Woe to the pedestrian who thinks he can strut across the street. Bada-bing.
Red lights are optional. So are car insurance and driver’s licenses. Solid lines are meant to be crisscrossed, and if you’re coming down a tight street, the car heading toward you will not yield, so steel yourself for a game of chicken. Everyone is in a hurry, but no one moves very quickly. A city that was built for 4.5 million people, Cario has 17 million and counting. The Al-Ahram Weekly reports that the average speed in the metropolis is 21 km or about 13 miles per hour. Two million vehicles crawl on streets meant to handle 500,000. So you wait, you pray, you recite the Koran, you download music, take pictures with your cellphone, curse, grimace, you do anything but pay attention to the idiot in front of you.
Al-Ahram writer Dena Rashed has some tips:
‘Always assume the next driver will make a huge mistake. . .
Horns are used to mimic swear words: learn the special tones if you want to know when you’re being sworn at; don’t swear at other drivers unless you are willing to have a fight. . .
Don’t be upset if your mirrors are repeatedly hit: the general assumption is they are not part of the car. . . Don’t assume the left lane is for fast cars: this is a free country; pick your lane, just don’t complain.’
— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo
