Mood Swings Dubious pleasures By Youssef Rakha "It's a festive time -- so began the 24-year-old Mahmoud "Balala" Kamal, retired car mechanic, impromptu salesman, part-time impresario and taxi-driver of Dayer Ennahya, the tiniest of "popular neighbourhoods" off the Dokki side of Tahrir Road -- and no time is as full of the dissipated ways of people who want to have a good time, truth to tell. You may think I am young, but frankly I've seen a lot, and on many levels of society, Ustaz. First I used to think, That's not fair. All these people purifying their minds of the year's exhaustion and waiting till the lights go out at midnight and wearing party hats; then me, an up-and-coming mechanic barely hatched out of the egg of childhood, spending the whole night driving the Osta around. Very soon I had a big fight with that Osta, ya ustaz, and it was about the fact that I had to wait for him in the truck until the small hours of the new year's morning while he spent time with some people in this little flat in Giza. He didn't even think of inviting me for a sip of beer. It was the second year round and I was almost 20. Let me not get into the details of our fight: I made him regret employing me in the first place... "You don't want to talk politics, right? But politics are more important than this. So I'll wait till you come back and ask me about politics because what I want is to give voice to all these people here, these loyal, truthful, hard-working neigbours who don't give a damn about New Year and all that dissipation. Anyway, when I was little it was a family thing, insofar as we were aware of it in the first place. But I remember discovering that people put out the lights at midnight. I would see those decorated trees -- the ones that look like inverted cones -- and I wouldn't even know what they were there for. And today there are people who say it's irreligious, I tell you: we are Muslims, of course, and this is a foreign habit. Father was usually out working, at least he said he was working; he is a truck driver and he's always on the road. So I went to my mother and told her that had we had a television we would've known how to celebrate like respectable people. No? People here rarely celebrate, you know. "That's why, after I left Osta Magdi -- that guy's name, it was Osta Magdi -- I vowed not to work on New Year's Eve ever again. Instead I'd get together with the kids and have a good time, just like we did occasionally on normal holidays. Only on holidays, Ustaz. Don't think I do that kind of thing every night. And that went on until I started working on this taxi and my vocation sort of altered. You want to know more specific things, I understand. About what I see on the job, on that night. But I was coming round to saying that, had I not worked on New Year's Eve that one night -- by coincidence I was kind of short on cash and somebody absolutely had to have the LE150 I owed them; that kind of thing happens to us unknown soldiers a lot, you know, Ustaz -- nothing would have shaken my refusal to work. I just about collected the required sum. But the thing is -- that night I discovered that, for somebody like me, doing the night shift was a really, really good way of spending New Year's Eve; because you get to have a good time as well. You see so much you earn a PhD in wily ways... "Okay, so there are things you can't publish, I know. And then there are boring things. Sit back, drink your tea, light up and I'll describe what happened last year. First there was a bit of fun with the kids -- don't think I do this every night, Ustaz -- then I went off around 10. For a while the traffic made me think there was no point. I got to Abdeen and there was a bunch of kids -- you know the kind -- and they wanted to buy something from a very bad neighbourhood. And I said I would go if they gave me LE50. They were expensively dressed and seemed okay. When we got there I wouldn't let them out of the car until they handed the money. They did, and they asked me to wait for them. But it took a long time, I got suspicious when I began to hear police sirens. Quickly I picked up a funny-looking woman at the corner; she had very little on in the cold. And all the way back to Mohandessin she was chatting me up, Ustaz. I think she wanted to get out of paying, but in the end it was okay and I spotted a foreign-looking couple, very respectable and all, on their way to the Marriott. They seemed to be fighting with each other or something. I tried to say a few things but neither of them uttered a word. The guy wanted to give me LE3 but when they realised there would be a fight she looked at him, he paid up and they went. The next customer told me it was quarter to 12. He was a very old man and good company. Where are you going? I said. He had no idea. I could smell liquor on his breath and we just drove on and on. The traffic was quieter now. The Nile was all light and music was echoing. He took a small bottle out of his pocket and handed it to me. I put the bottle to my mouth. "Kull sana winta tayeb," he said."
