Driving Miss Emma

Over the past ten years of visiting Cairo, I have taken pretty much every means of transport available: metro, chartered bus, mini-bus, micro-bus, train, taxi and private car. I have yet to ride on two other common forms—the scooter or the donkey/horse cart. I am sure that every single foreign exchange student, tourist, journalist and expatriate who has spent any time in Cairo has written something, be it a blog entry, tweet, status update, article, cry for help, or an expletive-laced rant about driving and traffic here. I won’t be adding anything new to the commentary on this unique Cairene phenomenon, but it would be impossible NOT to write something about the vehicular ethos of this fair city. (BTW- the picture of Theo is unrelated to anything in this entry. I just thought it was kind of cute.)

When we first arrived two months ago, we knew we would be without our car for some time while it made its way from storage in Antwerp. Some people opt never to drive in Cairo, and for good reason. You really have to get into a certain mindset to take to the roads in your own vehicle, though I would hasten to say you also have to similarly gird your loins to get into anyone else’s vehicle. As far as our family is concerned, we are unabashed car enthusiasts. Our concern for the environment and our liberal Bay Area roots will sadly never overcome our desire to be independent with our own set of wheels. As Dan said recently, “Why walk when you can drive?”

You may wonder what the big deal is about the driving here. Where to start? There are no traffic lights-- this in a city of twenty million people by day. I have seen a total of two since we arrived and both were blinking yellow. (This is definitely NOT the case of living in such a small town that there is only one traffic light.) There are no stop signs. No one uses turn signals. There is no observed right-of-way in any situation. There are no defined traffic lanes. There are thousands of roundabouts with snarls of cars surging around them, jockeying for position. The only way to get onto a main road from a side road is to gradually inch out into the onslaught of traffic and force the cars to slow down long enough to get yourself out there. Getting through any intersection is a bit like lancing a boil. You crowd in with a group of cars and slowly but surely, squeeze your way forward with everyone else until eventually your group breaks through and forces the cars coming from the other directions to stop while you ride the wave and stream through the intersection until another group of cars does the same to you.

Drivers here are under the mistaken impression that headlights use up gas, and so the ever-thrifty Cairenes simply never turn their headlights on, even at night, making driving on any fast roads truly treacherous after dark. If you miss a turn, you can simply back up to get back to where you wanted to go. It doesn’t matter if you are on the freeway and the cars are going at NASCAR speeds around you. If your car has a problem or you just want to take a break or you want to ask for directions, you can feel perfectly free to just stop in the middle of the road, on the overpass or in the merge lane and get that taken care of.

To say nothing of the actual condition of the roads. It seems that every road was built once, maybe fifty years ago, and never repaired. There are potholes like bomb craters on most streets, pools of standing water, random piles of rubble, tree debris and trash, and mountainous speed bumps, even on freeways, that bring the cars to a screeching halt as they stop to rapel up one side and down the other. Rather than patching major holes in the roads, someone (I don’t know who, since I’ve never seen anything approximating a road crew) simply rolls a huge boulder over the hole. At night, this means you can be driving along on an unilluminated route and suddenly find your bumper crashing into granite, seemingly out of nowhere.

Most residential streets in Cairo are pretty narrow, but that doesn’t stop everyone from parking and double-parking on both sides, leaving just a tiny stretch down the middle for cars to proceed single file, even though the streets are supposedly two-way. The only way to get down the streets is to fold in your mirrors, and it sucks to be you if you parked your car and didn’t automatically fold in your street-side mirror. I have seen many mirrors dangling off the sides of cars, likely sheared off by passing vehicles. Challenges arise in particular when cars go down streets in opposite directions and meet in the middle. There are several approaches to getting by: back up down the street and let the other car pass. Flash your lights as you turn down any street to assert your presence in advance and make sure the opposing car knows to stop and pull over. Or, the favored approach, which is to meet nose-to-nose and to honk incessantly at each other until someone backs down and backs up.

So why would anyone want to wade into this nutty world of driving? For me, the alternative, namely taxis, isn’t very appealing when hauling two small children. Dan gets transported to and from the embassy daily in comfortable, armored, air-conditioned shuttles. I have no such luxury. For the first six weeks we were here and before I got to borrow my sister’s car while she was on vacation, I was taking cabs every day to get Emma to and from preschool and to get anywhere else. After winging it for a few days, I arranged with a cab driver to do a daily pick-up for us so that I didn’t have to walk out to the main road and stand in the hot sun with the kids, hailing cabs and negotiating fares.

Ahmed, our driver, was a lovely man and actually punctual about 80% of the time, which frankly, I found rather astounding. His cab was something else. Many of the cabs here are dilapidated pieces of junk that run on rubber bands and glue. Any suspension or shock absorption has disappeared long ago, and seat belts are non-existent. The windows are permanently down to let in the 100+ degree breezes and the seats are usually cracked, black, scorching hot vinyl. Ahmed’s cab was no exception. It had to be at least 30 years old, one of the ubiquitous Ladas that crowd the streets of Cairo. The only thing missing was a bumper sticker that I saw on more than one cab around town declaring “I Love Curves.” I would strap Theo into the Baby Bjorn and climb in with Emma every morning and afternoon. By the time we reached our destination, I would be completely soaked in sweat. Eventually, I started to put in a gel freezer pack between my chest and Theo’s back to try to mitigate the furnace effect. I had to do a complete change of clothes after each trip.

So you can imagine how excited I was when Dan told me that our car had arrived on the shores of Alexandria. And how pissed I was when he found out it had gone to the wrong port and would take longer to process before it got to us. Finally, finally, last week, someone drove our "Barcelona Red" Rav 4 (affectionately known as the Red Hot Chili Pepper) through the gates of our apartment complex and it was home. We got to reacquaint Emma with her car seat (Huh? What’s that??) and I proudly took to the road the next morning to drop her off at school.

As I drove around, I noticed every other person gesturing frantically at me. Oncoming cars flashed their lights and honked. People leaned out of windows and made a blinking motion with their hands. What was up? This happened every time I went out. Finally, I asked Dan if he had any idea what people were going on about. Ah, they were concerned about my daytime running lights. Apparently, the idea of running lights is completely foreign, so everyone I pass takes it upon themselves to let me know that my lights are ON and likely devouring precious gasoline. I have been surfing the web looking for ways to disable running lights. If anyone has any clues, do let me know.

I am only a few weeks into my driving career here in Cairo, and I have a feeling I am in for quite a ride. Since our bright red car with its diplomatic plates doesn’t exactly blend in, Dan has ghettoized our dashboard with the flame-tipped, fake fur piece that he purchased in Yemen. What can I say, except that this picture doesn’t do it justice.