You Can't Make Mistakes.

I had some great cabbies this week. Usually they can go one of two ways: 1) mean, and/or trying to get some more cash out of your because you are foreign, 2) really frigging funny. The latter were exemplified this week.

We had one guy completely cracking up. We were coming back pretty late from a pool match in Maadi, so the Metro was closed. We just grabbed a cab, asked Mohandessin, and off we went. Started chatting up the driver, who seemed pretty jocular and good-spirited anyway, and in no time we were cracking jokes with him talking about his kids. It was a blast. We over-paid in the end, but only because we had so much fun.

Today I grabbed a cab because I was running late—nearly a non-issue—and didn’t want to hassle with the Metro. It was a Yellow Cab, which are a bit more expensive, but sometimes cheaper.

I should probably explain that. See, when you get in a regular cab here—a black-and-white—the price is entirely variable. Depending on the traffic, the mood of the cabbie, your status as a noob or an expat in Egypt, whether it is Ramadan or not, etc. the price for the same cab-ride could be 3 LE or 10 LE, 10 LE or 20 LE. Like I said: variable. Completely.

The Yellow Cabs, though, have meters that work and are utilized. I am not sure how this is enforced, but it is. So, if I am going to Medinat Nasr or the airport—both lengthy rides—it is actually less expensive to take a metered cab and tip. This is doubly true to and from the airport.

Generally B&W cabbies want 50 to 75 LE to take you to and from the airport. A Yellow cab will cost approximately 33 LE, and you can leave a tip, and get all the way home if its a round trip for about the same price at the alternative. Much better.

For short journeys, the B&W’s are just fine. You also can’t usually find the Yellow Cabs, since they are a call service as well, but they hang out in packs on certain corners, and I know some of those corners.

Back to the story: I grabbed a Yellow Cab on the corner near my apartment. It was hot today too and I kind of wanted to sit in an air-conditioned car rather than the non-air-conditioned Metro or a B&W, which typically are free of such luxury. Plus, it is just nice to drive across the city sometimes. It is such a beautiful, strange and crazy place, which is very difficult to take in on the underground. At least, not in the same way, I suppose.

So, anyway, I’m in the cab, start talking to the driver. We’re laughing about the dumb thing that other people were doing—and have been doing—while driving recently. We talked about what has been going on in Egypt recently with the strikes and other madness.

I told him that I am leaving for the United States—that’s “Amreekah,” to you—next week and that I am pretty excited to see my homeland. He offered, no, insisted that I call him to take me to the airport.

My favorite thing today, though, was the conversation about his kids. See, small-talk in cabs goes like this:

1. “Where are you from?”
2. “What do you think of Egypt?”
3. “Here’s what I think of America, what do you think of America?” Politics
4. Religion
5. Family and children
6. Questioning of the politics of each others’ countries now that we’re friends
7. Exchanging of mobile numbers (optional)
8. “Great to meet you. Cheers. Bye.”

His son’s name is Abdel Rahman. But, he referred to him always as, “My little man, Abdel Rahman.” Of course, it didn’t rhyme in Arabic, but it was still really funny. He showed me pictures on his phone. Fantastic. I felt like I could be pretty honest with this guy, so when he asked me if I liked kids: “Not really,” I replied, “I am fearing them”

He laughed boisterously at this. I, in an attempt to defend myself as valid, could only say, “Seriously, they are like the small people. And they are always getting themselves into the danger.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was laughing at my Arabic at this point—because we were really stretching the limits of my vocabulary—or at what I had said. This also led me to wonder if he understood that I was afraid of children or if he took it to mean that I feared midgets and dwarves—also sort of true, sorry Little People, more power to you—and therefore children as well, by extension.

He, after wiping the laughing tears out of his eyes, said that it was alright that children were always getting into trouble, because they were bl-blah-blah. I can only assume that the word I didn’t catch meant “kids bounce back easily” or “children are expendable and easily replaced.” Either would have made sense to me, in the given context. And that was that. He continued chuckling for a minute and the told me he was thrilled to have met me and he would see me on Tuesday and I got out of the cab.

It was great. The only time that I have ever had this much fun in cabs at home was the time that I got a cab in Chicago and the guy sang. I thought that it was just a cool thing that happened on the way to the airport, but apparently the guy is a legend. Finding that out made it less special.

All cab rides in Cairo are special in their own way. For that, I am thankful.