Egyptian Road

Here's the simple idea: In almost every city around the world, there's a certain time where it's a rush hour. That time can be an hour...or two. Excluding only two cities: Cairo and Alexandria of Egypt. In here, it's a 24-hour rush hour. The rush hour never ends. The streets are tight and you have almost everything in motion...From bicycles to donkeys to cars to buses and sometimes, you can even get what we Egyptians call 'Al Toromay Al Safra' or the Yellow Train that walks RIGHT through the street with you.

The Lada taxies should probably build an empire for themselves. They're amazing...They have their own rules and their own laws and their own language too...I'm referring to the new horn language. Recently and in many years past, the horn has been used by taxi drivers to initiate the tone of the syllables of the profanities they may utter to the person who had crossed their 'lane'. It's complex but from my taxi tourism, I can't say it's not true nor can I confirm its absolute truth.

The taxi drivers here NEVER use the signal. It is as if they think it is taboo or something. If a taxi driver wants to come to the left, he'll spread his arm from the window and point his finger towards the left lane or your lane to signify that he's coming through. If he decides to come to the right, then you really have to watch out. Because then, either the taxi driver asks the poor citizen to do the right arm-signal for him or he simply decides to jump in.

However, every cab in here is an artistic piece by itself. It may be decorated with the pictures of the driver's kids, may support a mind-blowing sound system that fits a Porche and it can be bare and naked and ugly like most of the cabs. The taxi stops only when he wants to stop and goes where he wants to goes. He can tie up his seatbelt around his legs and he may have simply taken off your seatbelt so that you can feel so comfortably safe.

Leaving out the cabs, you're left with the mini-buses. Those are pretty bad too. They have drivers that can and may push a swiss knife right through your tummy if you decided to give them a horn or shout your frustration with the road back at them. I have seen a mini-bus driver pull a swiss knife on a guy who scratched his bumper. No kidding. All mini-bus drivers have the same haircut as far as I have concluded and many of them share the same style of beard too.

The donkey carts and horse carts of fruits, vegetables and rubbish (note that there's a company called Onyx that cleans the country, therefore thsoe rubbish people are simply just putting rubbish from one place to the other). The carts can come anywhere and the drivers may feel offended if you horn...They think that you think they're too slow. Shumacchers they are, bless them. Was that spelled right?

On top of all that...The streets are being spread with tar and rebuilt and repainted wherever and whenever. It's the cherry on the cake...Or the pickle on the sandwich. Something like that.

Keep it real and keep it cool fellows. Until we meet again...