Letter from Cairo: Green for ‘go.’ Red for ‘go’

When I started driving, I realized that running a red light, parking under the no parking sign, or entering a no entry street are the teaser you get to see when you are an outsider… the real action starts when you are actually behind the wheel and when you view a bumper car ride as safer and more law-abiding than maneuvering your way through the streets of the capital. Try to look at a main Cairene street during rush hour from the tenth floor and you will spare me the strenuous effort I would have to exert to describe a spectacle no sane mind can conceive as anything other than the most advanced level of some car racing game, except that in the Egyptian version it is not who arrives first at the destination, but who breaks more rules, who calls fellow motorists more names, who runs or is about to run over as many pedestrians as possible, who gives more honks, and who double, triple, and quadruple parks until you end up with a one-lane street. I remember when in the U.S. a friend of mine told me I can use her car whenever I wanted, and another friend looked at her in disbelief and said, “How can you let an Egyptian drive your car?” She looked at him scornfully then replied, “If she can drive in Egypt, she can drive anywhere else in the world.”

The international reputation of Egypt’s traffic was not new to me because a couple of months before this conversation, I heard a joke that represented for me the perfect example of a tragic-comedy: A man takes a cab in New York and is terrified to see how the driver runs a red light. “Don’t worry… Egyptian,” goes the driver. One red light after the other and the passenger gets the same response: “Don’t worry… Egyptian” until it was time for a green light and, to the passenger’s astonishment, the driver stops. Before he could inquire, the driver was quick to answer: “Maybe unuzzer Egyptian.”

Back to my friend who gave me the car… I do owe her lot because it is thanks to her that I learnt that driving could be a pleasure and that people can go out of their houses for a drive. For me, this was a totally absurd concept since in Egypt you drive because you have to and had you been given the choice, you would not have gotten out of your house in the first place. When I discovered how relaxing it is to drive while abiding by the rules and while everyone around you does the same, I wondered why Egyptians choose the hard way and make a battle of the shortest of trips while they can just sit back and listen to Dixie Chicks “Taking the long way round”—a favorite of mine and this friend— while moving smoothly towards wherever they’re going. Breaking some rules could be fun for many people, but this doesn’t apply to traffic because every time you run an errand, you go back home with the feeling that you have been hiking up the Andes and because if you look around you, it becomes very obvious that none of those law-breakers is having a good time at all.

I don’t want to seem like I lay the blame for every single problem in the country on the former regime, but I can’t help doing so even if my theory is wrong. The parallelism between traffic and the regime became obvious to me when the more tyrannical the regime grew, the more chaotic traffic became and the more aggressively motorists, from owners of sports cars to bus drivers, behaved. For me, this was not really attributed to the regime’s indifference as far as abiding by the law is concerned even though I know that the regime thrived on breaking the law neither is it a direct result of the regime’s encouragement of all kinds of behavioral patterns that distract the people from the real reasons behind their miserable lives even though I know that the regime always managed to nourish animosities whenever possible—sectarian tension and football rivalry being the most notorious instances. Apart from the regime’s attempts to ensure the prevalence of chaos, and which had always worked very well, it is important to see why people responded to those plans and, in fact, seemed to implement them with much ease and a quite shocking steadfastness.

The road was one of the very few domains where Egyptians were able to be in control and the rage vented out on it was the only means of proving that this is where they can prevail. Road rage, for me, is like sexual harassment, for I don’t subscribe to the theory that the frustration that drives a man to grab parts of a woman’s body is really “sexual” and is motivated by the youths’ inability to get married and have an intimate relationship with a woman.

I see sexual harassment as an act of pure violation in which the perpetrator’s resentment at almost every lack of fulfillment in his life comes out in one of the very few actions in which he can prove he is strong and capable of wanting something and getting it. Sexual harassment becomes the best outlet because it is directed at a person always looked upon as weaker and more unlikely to react violently, which will not be the case if he decides to punch another man in the face for example. With road rage, it is played safe, too, since almost all parties involved in traffic brawls know that with each fighter sheltered in a car and with each hostile act taking no more than a few seconds, two birds will be hit with one stone—you will vent your anger and you will most probably emerge unscathed.

So when a fellow motorist gives a left signal and you press the gas pedal with all your might so you can pass in the narrow space between him and the curb right before he turns—even though you might be going right after all—it is as if you feel insulted by this signal that should oblige you to give in to somebody else’s will. “It’s not up to you to decide,” you seem to be warning him. And when a pedestrian shows the first signs of wanting to cross and you also press the gas pedal, a little harder this time maybe, so you can go first even if this means that you might be a split of a second away from running him over and might have to make a sharp swerve to avoid doing that, it is as is letting him cross means bestowing upon him a privilege he doesn’t deserve. “Nobody respects me, so why should I respect you?” he might be wanting to ask the pedestrian who would then be jumping in fright and wondering if he should have written a will. It is an eye for an eye most of the time.

That same pedestrian might intentionally jump from nowhere in front of you car and knowingly risk his own life so he can see the expressions of shock and confusion on your face and even some guilt if the car does actually hit him—he doesn’t mind a couple of bruises here and there for the fun of it—in order to deliver to you more or less the same message—with a little variation, though: “If you can kill me, I can make you wet your pants.” And when you curse a fellow motorist and all his ancestry and offspring because he honked at you or asked you to turn off the high beam or complained that you double parked in front of his car, it is not because you don’t feel you’re wrong and you won’t get equally furious if the same happens to you. It is just that in a place where you can’t speak your mind and can’t choose who makes decisions on your behalf and can’t live as a respectable citizen, you wouldn’t mind labeling the driver next to you with all those nasty attributes you have been for a long time piling up against the president and the ministers and the police and the regime and the whole country. It is a very basic process of re-channeling anger and, consequently, putting off an always-imminent explosion.

Watching Cairo traffic from a distance gives you the impression that this a country at war with itself, that all its people have turned against each other and every citizen is impatiently awaiting the chance to jump his compatriots’ throats. Although this is not entirely true, it is also not entirely wrong. They were engaged in this not-so-mortal combat because they had to create imaginary enemies in the only place where they felt powerful even for a few minutes, rather hours since we’re talking Cairo traffic. However, think how the situation would be if all those whose main preoccupation is cutting off other cars, tailgating cars that they think are too slow, cussing at whoever takes their parking spot, and stopping in the middle of the road just to retaliate on the driver behind you for honking too much are suddenly faced with a humongous trailer moving towards them at the speed of light and intent on crushing anything that stands in its way. Would they still engage in trivial skirmishes until their cars, with them inside, are leveled to the ground? Would anyone think about who goes first and who parks where and who honked at whom and who cursed the day on which who was born? Maybe not!

Maybe they will reflect for a moment, look at one another then to the monster approaching then yell in the most melodious of unisons, “Don’t worry… Egyptians!”