Cairo.
We arrived in Cairo in a daylight. I saw the city from the plane. It was a normal city. And A Huge City. The biggest I’ve ever seen. And even if Cairo grows on a desert plain, there were no boundaries visible from above. I’ve read that there are 16 millions in Cairo…That’s A LOT. No wonder Cairo is the biggest city in Africa. And the busiest too.
They say - Cairo never sleeps. I had plenty of time to check this for myself. Or to…hear this, to be more precisely. The thing is…Cairo is The City Of The Sounds. Day or night, we’ve been surrounded with the dissonance of all kinds of sounds, eventually transforming into some sort of mysterious oriental melody of bazaars and spicy adventures, car horns and a donkey’s yell, and modern Arabic pop music from the audio of Cairo taxies…
Cairo Taxi.
This should be really a separate topic. I think, it should be even an independent book – if one sets to write about Cairo taxies, they will end up with an action thriller, comedy sketch book and love story, all in one.
So what is it about Cairo’s taxi? Well, for once, if you challenged yourself with a taxi ride, be prepared for a thrilled experience. Taxi in Cairo are normally old cars, that look like real veterans. Not only look, but they, actually, are – for all time I was in Cairo, I’ve never seen any new and unscratched taxi. Normally it would be car that has two main things: an engine and a horn. Anything else is optional.
Honestly, In all the taxies I’ve travelled in Cairo, none had handles on the rare doors or any kind of means of opening windows (although in few cars I’ve ride, rare windows had “automatic opening mechanism” - every time we drove upon a bump in a road, the glass would swiftly bounce up and down, thus eliminating the need for manual operation, so guess, any special gadget simply not needed)
Most of the taxies wouldn’t have headlights, windscreen wipers, side mirrors might hang down on their cables, like a side-decorations, most would not have them at all, they may have permanently stuck locked boot, and almost every single car – stuck forever rare door from at least one side…they might be missing bumpers, or at least one body panel, hubcaps, and either the bonnet, or the boot panel. Some of these parts may secured with rope or bungee cords.
BUT all of them will always have a perfectly functional horn!
We’ve tried to figure out why they use the horn for any circumstances: when overturn; when stop; when accelerate; when just slightly break; when squeezing between two cars on a two-lane road; when see pedestrians crossing the road in two inches from the bumper of a car; when see pedestrians, wanting to cross the road in few meters ahead, even if the car actually turns left before the crossing; when see the traffic policeman, helplessly trying to balance between cars coming really close from both sides, naturally without paying any attention to the traffic policeman; when want to turn left; right; or to perform u-turn in the middle of a traffic jam; or when just want to carry on moving in the same direction; when see a cousin on the opposite side of the road and when simply want to wish a good day to all the fellow drivers that happened to be around or if equally want to vent out frustration to the same fellow drivers…well, you’ve got the picture…horn is The Vital Part of the car in Cairo. So we came to the conclusion, that because of the absolutely perfect chaos in a traffic life in Cairo, there is no chance for the participants to react in time to the happenings on a road. Horn helps to draw attention and despite of how crazy it might sounds, this actually does helps. Maybe human senses made in such way that we are more alerted in hearing then in seeing…
By all means taxi travel in Cairo is one of a lifetime experience. I don’t think there is any road code in Egypt in general. People seem to drive just how they want and where they want and horn takes care of the rest. The main rule seems to be the following: if there is a gap in the traffic where you can get at least one part of your vehicle (corner of the bumper, for example, if you have one, of course), then you obliged to fill this gap. “Distance between the vehicles”????!!! Oh, please! There is one acceptable distance between vehicles in Cairo: two inches. Anything more then this considered indecent and should be filled immediately. Anything less then this justifies driver’s decision to move to the other place, where there are two inches of free space.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that all the bustle on the road is happening in “atomic” fashion – i.e. in absolutely random directions. It is not unusual to see the car moving “anti-current” on the centre lane or even moving “across” both lanes, heading for the side-street from the farest possible line. To be fair, I never heard of any accidents happening more often then in other, “normal” cities of the world…Strange, huh?
Watching how pedestrians deal with the road crossing was not for the heart-fainted either. After few days participating in Cairo traffic fun from inside the taxi, we finally ventured for the crossing one of the most crowded squares – Midan Tahrir. Well…It took us about 30 mins to make it from one side to the opposite. And a couple of “goodbyemylife” moments. Two good things came out of this though: we were still alive and we discovered that we don’t really like to be pedestrians in Cairo. Ever since we only used taxies. Somehow these car-killers felt safer anyway…
I can go on and on and on about Cairo traffic…but guess, it’s time to stop, as there are so many other things, awaiting in a queue…:-)