Black-and-white wisdom
Rania Khallaf had never called out "Taxi" with more awareness
Taxi is the title of a new book by the young, good-looking producer, scriptwriter and director Khaled El-Khamissy. A 220-page volume published earlier this year by Dar Al-Shorouq, it has sold very well, achieving a rare popularity with four reprints in the period December 2006-April 2007 (largely unprecedented in Dar Al-Shorouq). Its novelty derives from a certain conjunction of genres: part anthropological study, part comic sketch collection, it is perhaps the first literary account of taxi drivers in Cairo. Comprising 58 tales, it introduces the writer to the same number of those unacknowledged guardians of popular wisdom, who encounter every nook and cranny of society while they drive their black- and-white vehicles. And, for entertainment if perhaps not for academic value, it is well worth the cover price of LE15.
Lying on the border separating fiction from social chronicle, the book is light and fast-paced, and it represents a genre largely new to Arabic letters. More importantly, as novelist Somaya Ramadan has put it, "These texts, reflecting the reality of life, speak for the marginalised." The only exception to the rule whereby taxi drivers are indeed excluded from the media is the early-1980s Atef El-Tayib film, Sawwaa El-Utobis (The Bus Driver), starring Nour El-Sherif. Written almost entirely in the vernacular, the 58 pieces are unrelated, and include - as well as hilarious episodes: the driver who stays up for three days to gather the due instalment on his vehicle, for example -unrelenting criticism of government, especially economic policies: "Our Prime Minister is the chairman of the Telecommunications Organisation... so this only means, sir, that all his announcements will fly in the air." Another driver, remembering Mustafa Kamel's famous slogan "If I was not Egyptian I would desire to be Egyptian" -- one of many, many empty expressions of patriotism popularised in the media -- asks what that could possibly mean. Elsewhere comedy prevails: "The last time I went to see a movie was in 1984. This was in Cinema Cairo on Emadeddin Street. Since then I've been smashed by all that it takes to stay alive, I've become like the minced meat. My kids never went to the cinema or the theatre. They watch satellite channels at the coffee shop adjacent to our house. I wonder what kind of ideas will grow in their minds that way. I guess nothing will grow in their minds but a fig."
On another occasion El-Khamissy accompanies his two sons on a visit to a friend by taxi, and his conversation with the taxi driver starts with the latter expressing his admiration for the boys and praying that they grow up safe and sound -- a preamble to his own (palpably false) story about an only son afflicted with cancer, whose treatment he can't afford. Any Cairene will recognise the obvious: El-Khamissy is commenting on the phenomenon of begging, everyone begging, a particular feature of the Mubarak era. He quotes a friend as saying that if you didn't steal in the time of Sadat, you missed out on stealing forever; and if you don't beg in the time of Mubarak, you'll miss out on begging forever. Another quote: "The Ministry of Interior treats taxi drivers as criminals and liars. I wonder why we're so routinely humiliated by traffic police. Maybe it's something they learn at the Police Academy: that human beings are liars by nature... I swear to God, most of the time I feel more like a dirty pairs of shoes than a human being. What do you think, sir? Am I a man or an old, dirty pair of shoes?"
The drivers have the tendency to come up with their own theories; and the theories are endless. One Nubian, for example, believes that the billions spent on the Toshka project -- a project that failed in its objectives, at least as far as the Nubians, its would-be beneficiaries, are concerned -- should have been distributed among the people. A young man says bluntly that he prefers smoking to marriage, since it is at least cheaper." And another still, in the context of the "farcical satire everyone is fed up of watching" which is the presidential elections: "I honestly do not like Mubarak," he goes on, "but having noticed the photos of other presidential candidates, I said to myself, may be Mubarak is better than those stupid puppets." Most pieces are conversation-based, with little description of the drivers' characters. As El-Khamissy himself puts it, speaking over the phone to the Weekly, the idea behind the book "just came to my mind one day; I had never planned to write this book, but one day I decided to lock my door and write down the most interesting tales with taxi drivers in Cairo". He has since had to lock himself up again to complete his first novel, to appear with Dar Al-Shorouq at the end of this year.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/858/cu5.htm