Please. Do not get excited by the headline above. This is neither a column about my sexual preferences nor how stylish I may be. It is not about being bohemian or metropolitan. It is about that long, winding blue and white tube which careens under the smog-infested streets of Cairo and every day carries millions of people. Yes, the metro. And you will understand in a minute the headline I chose. It has been about 10 years since I last entertained myself in the packed sardine can. Back in 1996, when I was a young lad and prone to odorous adventures, the metro was the best, surest, and fastest way to get from Maadi to Downtown. As a student at the American University in Cairo in the late 1980s, the metro, still in its infancy really, provided me with a surefire means to get to my classes on time. I hop in the Maadi - or Sakaanat El Maadi station - and 20 to 25 minutes later I am climbing the stairs leading out of the Sadat station in Tahrir Square. To my immediate right is the Main Campus of AUC. Nothing could be better. But wait. Lest you envy my ancient lifestyle, consider that the metro is rather closed and commuters tend to defy logic. For example, the wooden shades are drawn ensuring no passage of air or circulation despite the intense heat which could accumulate when you are buried underground. This leads to competitive sweating - whereby the winner is awarded a can of empty deodorant. Excuse my sarcasm. It is not an easy ride. For example, not only do you have to combat the belligerent smells which invade your senses but rubbing shoulders when the cars are filled to capacity could lead to a friend tagging along with you wherever you go. As in ticks. And their long lost cousins, fleas. So what on earth could have possibly possessed me to ride the metro last Monday? In the 10 years since my "metrordeals I have gained meaningful employment and can afford to buy a car, if lucky, and/or take a cab. Well, to be perfectly honest, the comment of someone in the office about how none of the richer clique take the metro ticked me off. There's that word again - 'tick'. I used to take the metro, dammit! And almost every day to boot. Nothing like anger to make you do something not entirely asinine, eh. At around 1pm I bought a ticket, it was LE 1 as opposed to 25 piasters so many eons ago. I waited for the rush of the wind in God's Doppler effect as the train approached. Nothing had changed. It felt exactly the same, nothing had changed; the platform at the station was semi-clean, semi-dirty, the metro ticket was the same bland yellow - it all felt odd. But in the past 10 years, while Cairo's metro stayed the same, technology, and specifically that of mobile phones, came into the fore. Ah, how wonderful to be on the metro and hear the ring tones of dozens of young men. One man, apparently bored out of his mind as the metro moved in and out of subterranean caverns, decided to play an entire Nancy Agram tune on his phone/Mp3 player. And because he was philanthropic, we all got to savor the soft, cuddly voice of a Lebanon pussycat. And that is when the testosterone levels of nearly 140 men just blew the top off the car carrying us. A woman and her male colleague got on the train and all the other men just stared at her. In the background, Agram was still singing, but it felt more like a dreaded echo soundtrack to this woman's nightmare. She was nervous. But then, by divine intervention or what you will, the Agram song was over and someone else decided to play an entire Quranic verse on his mobile phone. The guilty communal conscience set in and with its mighty sword of justice slew the horned sexual beast of testosterone. Darth Vader was dead. And so, apparently, was my sanity. When the doors slid open in Sadat station, I rushed out, pushed my way out, ran up the stairs and was in Tahrir Square. Free at last, thank God, I was free at last. But you know something, it was not unbearable. It was by a good measure better then getting stuck in traffic in Kasr El Aini street, sucking on a car exhaust and having your head pounded by the addictive, masochistic beating of car horns. And it was faster. A small price to pay, really. Call me Luke Skywalker; I think I will take the metro again tomorrow.
