Khamissi's book “Taxi” gives a teeming portrait of Egyptian society through 58 taxi rides taken by the first-person narrator along the crammed and polluted streets of Cairo. Each ride is depicted in a short chapter of one to three pages in which the drivers spring vividly to life, thanks to Al-Khamissi's descriptive powers and effective reconstruction of dialogue. The book is based on stories and incidents that Al Khamissi shared with taxi drivers between April 2005 and March 2006. He has omitted some stories, however, “because lawyer friends of mine told me that publishing them all would guarantee my being thrown in jail on libel charges and that it could be dangerous to record the precise names in jokes or particular stories which are widely circulated on the streets of Egypt.” “Taxi” was a bestseller when it was published in Egypt last year. It has now been published in English translation by British publisher Aflame Books. Al-Khamissi wrote his book in the blunt and vital language of the Egyptian street. Translator Jonathan Wright has done an excellent job of rendering this language into idiomatic English that captures the original's sarcasm, jokes, outbursts, and pithy observations. Wright studied Arabic and Turkish at Oxford University, and is the Cairo bureau chief of Reuters. Al-Khamissi, born in 1962, is a journalist, film director and producer. He studied political science at Cairo University and the Sorbonne in Paris, and says: “Often I see in the political analysis of some drivers a greater depth than I find among a number of political analysts who pontificate far and wide.” The Egyptian people “really are a teacher to anyone who wishes to learn.” There are around 80,000 taxi drivers in Cairo. Their ranks swelled in the latter half of the 1990s when decrees were issued permitting any car to be converted into a taxi, and allowing banks to give loans for cars, including taxis. Many unemployed people became taxi drivers, and struggled to pay back their loans. Despite the financial and other pressures endured by the taxi drivers, the book is permeated by their robust humor. At one point the narrator is in a taxi waiting in a long queue for natural gas, half the price of petrol. He and the driver get out of the cab and join a group of taxi drivers who are in “a state of incessant collective laughter” as they trade jokes about Viagra, marriage and politics. The narrator decides that whenever he is at a loss as to what to do he will return to the gas station and share some laughs with the taxi drivers – “loud raucous laughs, laughs from the belly and definitely not from the heart.” Al-Khamissi conveys the varied appearances and personalities of his taxi drivers. The face of one has “an unfathomable sadness.” The pale face and stunted stature of another, whose driving is alarmingly erratic, suggest chronic malnutrition. The narrator cites the “horrifying statistic that 10 per cent of the children in southern Egypt are mentally retarded from malnutrition.“ He has heard a radio report that the air force has a problem recruiting new pilots because almost all applicants are rejected on account of of their poor physical or psychological fitness, linked to widespread malnutrition. The narrator observes of an elderly driver: “The wrinkles in his face were as many as the stars in the sky, and every wrinkle pressed gently against the next, to make the kind of Egyptian face created by the sculptor Mahmoud Mukhtar.” (The book's glossary explains that Mukhtar, who died in 1934, is considered the father of modern Egyptian sculpture). The narrator frequently draws comparisons with characters or works of Arab or Western culture, perhaps as a way of maintaining some distance from the drivers. The drivers describe the various scams that help the “big fish” of Egyptian society get rich at the expense of the poor, often related to the importing of certain items or the granting of licenses. Corruption, both petty and gross, is endemic. Economic difficulties are perpetually on the drivers' minds. One notes with incredulity that Egyptians spend more than 20 billion pounds a year on telephone calls. “The people are crazy, by God. People have nothing to eat and everyone's walking around with a mobile and a cigarette in his mouth.” A Nubian driver tells the narrator about the much-trumpeted Toshka land reclamation project in Upper Egypt. Although billions have been spent on the project, he says it is “dead and buried,” and that people like him must seek work elsewhere. The drivers find various ways of trying to supplement their incomes. One is a speculator on the stock exchange. The narrator advises him to give up this hazardous activity, but the driver replies: “For the big fish to get fat, we flies mustn't stop buzzing.” Another explains how he smuggles cigarettes into Libya. The poor state of public education and the need to buy private lessons are a top preoccupation. Al Khamissi writes: “Private lessons are like brand names. You can find them at all prices to suit every class and segment of society.” The outbreak of bird flu causes a panic among those of modest incomes, not only for health reasons but because chicken is the animal protein on which their families depend, as meat and fish are beyond their means. Instead of being burned, chickens slaughtered as a precaution are recklessly stuffed into irrigation channels. Politics is never far from people's minds. Some drivers see elections as a farce, not only in Egypt but also in the West. A number of them criticize President Husni Mubarak, other praise him, with one claiming that Mubarak's experience as a pilot makes him smart, alert and focused. The narrator reveals little of his personal life, but tells one driver as they pass the walls of Cairo University of the nostalgia he feels for his college days. Two decades on, the dreams for Egypt he dreamed within those walls even now “shake me to the core”. He tells the driver that “most of those sold out had received the keys to the gates, while those who continued to dream had seen their towering hopes dashed to the ground by battering rams.” Some of the drivers have worked abroad, for example in Iraq. Several have fond memories of that country, and sympathy for the Iraqis. The drivers are prone to conspiracy theories; for example that the Americans themselves destroyed the Twin Towers. The drivers sometimes play sermons on cassettes in their taxis. The narrator protests to one driver at the “nonsense” of a preacher ranting about the temptation and dangers of women and their dress. The driver then launches into a diatribe about girls, suggesting that the girls seen on certain streets in Cairo should be slaughtered or even burned. The final chapter has an unexpected serenity. It is set on a Ramadan evening when it is difficult to find a taxi as people rush home for iftar, but a “black angel” from Assiut gives the narrator a ride. This man in his late 50s, with gentle features and a melodious voice has travelled and worked in Europe. He is fond of art and gardening, and keeps birds. The man's affinity with beauty hints at the solace offered by creativity. More book reviews on Page 14 __
