A day like any other

By Fayza Hassan
Living in Cairo is not a piece of cake, but I have come to believe that I love its chaos. I have my routine and, over the years, have devised strategies to iron out difficulties as I go along. Undeniably, the more money one has, the easier it becomes to solve daily problems. Unfortunately an abundance of cash invariably leads to a keen desire to travel. Other horizons, other cities: within days one forgets the grind of one's other existence.
Coming back, however, depression sets in on the heels of jet lag.
At the airport, the idea of what lies ahead is already discouraging: finding one's luggage, loading it onto a cart, going through customs, booking a limousine...
We'll never make it home, I reflected rather bitterly, on our return from holidays this summer. Reality was even worse, since three of our four suitcases had not arrived.
It took us three hours to lodge our complaint. I tried to remember one of my friends, who is fond of telling herself "this, too, will pass" whenever confronted with unpleasantness. I said it to myself seven or eight times, and it did.
Coming home is supposed to be a happy occasion. I looked around the apartment and noticed with unusual irritation that the servants had cleaned the pictures on the wall and, as is their consecrated habit, replaced every one of them at a queer angle. "We have too many things in this house," I mumbled to myself. I thought of my daughter's neat little living room in Florida and I wanted to cry. How did we accumulate so much rubbish over the years? I should have a big auction sale and get rid of every single thing I own. I imagined the house suddenly empty, our voices echoing lugubriously in the rooms stripped of their knickknacks. I did not fancy the idea either. Then I thought of my books. The shelves had been rearranged and, although not all the dust had been removed, every single volume had been replaced upside down -- also as usual. It was too much to bear. I went to bed.
The following day I had to go to work. I took one look at our car and felt nauseous. I certainly did not want to deal with the traffic. I stopped a taxi and told the driver where I was going and added that I had no change. I would give him a LE50 bill and expect to get LE30 back. He checked his wallet and assured me that he had the money. His taxi was no Yellow Cab. It threatened to come to pieces at every bump, and there were many; yet he did not seem to care. He drove with one hand and with the other fiddled with his tape recorder, which whistled and sputtered. Finally, a male voice singing a vaguely obscene Gulf-type song made itself heard over the static. At once the volume went as high as it would go. I clenched my teeth and looked out the window.
We were zigzagging down the Corniche by then, but soon had to come to an abrupt stop. Workers, their equipment strewn on the road, were in the process of enlarging the footpath on my right. Just before I went on holiday they had been tightening the median. Now the road was no larger, but was lined on the left side by a ridiculously narrow elevated strip, while on the right, the footpath was so large that it would have accommodated three cars abreast. "What is going on?" I hollered. "People need to work," the driver hollered back. "Why don't they fix the Misr-Helwan Road? It would relieve the traffic." I was getting hoarse and he took pity on me, lowering the volume a tad to inform me that "Egyptians don't think." He must have done a lot of thinking himself, because when we reached our destination he informed me that unfortunately he only had LE25.
As I left the cab a man stopped me: "My mother," he gasped, "is in hospital. She is dying, and I don't have the money to take her home. Please help me." Because I was in a particularly foul mood, I took a second look at him. "I know you," I said. "Last time you were begging, it was to take your father home. Besides, let me tell you: this is a maternity hospital, so if your mother is there she must be having a baby." I was wickedly pleased at his discomfiture. "This has to stop," I admonished myself. "Why can't you be your usual happy self?" But it wasn't to be.
On my way home, I took another cab, as rickety as the first. The driver was of the religious variety, and over the reading of the Qur'an emanating from his tape recorder, kept telling me that when he had agreed on the price, he did not know that Maadi was so far away. Besides, at this time of night he would not find passengers on his way back. Had he known that I meant the Maadi that is really in Maadi, he would have charged me LE40, at least. And on, and on. Finally I tapped him on the shoulder. "Do you want twenty when we get there, or nothing and I get out now?" I snapped. That shut him up. When we arrived home I gave him the bill without a word. "At least tell me how to get out of here," he wailed. He was out of luck. I had had enough. I gave him wrong directions, and fervently hope he is still looking for the way out.
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