Faisal Street, Giza, is a very long street. It is with regret that no specif- ic measurement can be supplied as this thoroughfare seems to have elastic prop- erties. Let me explain. Crossing Roxy Square, nosing one's way through the snarl- up at Gisr Sueis and El-Qobba crossroads can be measured in terms of fractions of an hour. For example, you might anticipate star- ing at the same driving school office for...aw...at least a quarter of an hour. Add another half-an-hour to cover Hegaz Street from Heliopolis Square to Roxy, including the hissy-fit at Mahkama crossroads, and you can be at Soraya el-Qobba metro station within three quarters of an hour. As for the transit by metro from the afore- mentioned stop to Faisal on the new line, one can estimate the time taken in minutes, because they sound swishier and hurried. Depending on the time of day, you can expect a smooth change of line either at el- Shuhadaa or Sadat, according to how many of your fellow passengers are pressed up against the door as they anticipate alighting at the former. Or might you be crushed by the maelstrom of humanity boarding the train at the latter station? Either way, you should allow at least ten minutes for the change from the older-shabbier-but-still-run- ning-along line to its younger, sleeker and more streamlined brother that seems smoother thanks to having learnt from the flaws and short-comings of the older route. Now you have left the train at Faisal. You mount the steps to the ticket barriers, through which you zoom, thence to another flight of stairs, which you descend into the dusty chaos at ground level. What a contrast it is between the penultimate word in electric traction and railway signalling with the pot- holes and the donkey cart jostled by impa- tient black-and-white taxis that lurch menac- ingly towards the diners at the tables on the right-hand bend. Definitely a tableau entitled ‘Faisal by Night'. Since the cabs are often full, the hapless pedestrian, formerly a metro passenger, has no alternative but to footslog it along the semi-tarmac track, along which the pavement is conspicuous by its absence, and dice with death, being narrowly missed by vehicles of every age and model to where the flyover descends onto the beginning of [strident chord] King Faisal Street, Giza. What did the citizens of the western portion of Africa's largest city do to deserve such confusion? ‘Unde et quo omnia?' Mark Anthony might have remarked with a tinge of a Welsh accent. (Werl, he was played by the late Sir Richard Burton in the 1962 film.) By the way, the etymology of the Egyptian Arabic term ‘otobiis' might be of interest to some of our readers. It is a rendering of the French ‘autobus' with the centralised ‘u'- sound that non-French speakers find so elu- sive. This term is itself a stump word, com- prising ‘automobile' and ‘omnibus'. The first element is self-explanatory, while the second is – wait for it – the dative plural of the Latin ‘omnes', meaning ‘for everyone'. As Napoleon might have said in 1799, ‘Bon ‘ere, inni?' Of course, despite the classical foundation of the English education system, Britain has given the world ‘bus', which, in the good old days, was spelt with an initial apostrophe, deemed mandatory by Oxford grammarians on the grounds that ‘bus' is a vulgar apocopation of the ancient dative plu- ral pronoun. In Sudan, they speak of ‘baaS' [plural ‘baSaat']. Even the Japanese take the ‘basu', while some of their neighbours across the sea board a ‘gong-gong-ki-che'. But I digress. Indeed, whence and whither all this traf- fic? It is as if conveyances in various states of repair and of sundry dimensions have been placed on this two-line internal high- way by a giant hand and left to fend-er for themselves. ‘Oh tempora! O mores!' a mod- ern-day Cicero might exclaim – but not nec- essarily in Latin, although the choice of lan- guage is irrelevant because no one can year you scream on King Faisal Street. Finally, a taxi driver takes pity on you and you clamber in, hoping that he might have heard of your destination. ‘Dunno it, sunshine,' the chauffeur lacon- ically informs you. In fact, nobody seems to know where any- thing is in this street. Private dwellings are many in the streets leading off the main thor- oughfare, which appears to have been built on an embankment, since the back streets descend into seas of mud. How on earth do locals remember where their residences are located? O they use Satnav? Or is a large ball of string the technology of choice? If one has an office on this street, or is contemplating securing employment in premises in this area, one might think twice, nay, three times, about commuting. The problem with King Faisal Street is that there are so many U-turns in both direc- tions, which means that what might laugh- ably be called traffic flow, is continually brought to a stop because other road users wish to go in the opposite direction to reach the shop or office that lay two kilometres back, but there was no way of crossing the road, unless one wishes to destroy shock absorbers and steering mechanism. In addition, where pedestrians are in the majority, for example, at a bus terminal, they exploit the safety in numbers principle and cross the road to hail taxis and Volkswagen buses to other destinations. The solution? Sitting in the snail's pace journey towards the nearest metro stop affords an opportunity to ponder such. However, one feels that the task would demand minds immeasurably superior to our own to grapple with. We could be European about it and pedestrianise this street. Too drastic. Sixth of October City? El-Obour City? Again, too radical. In the meantime, enjoy the view of the nodding dog in the back window of the vehicle ahead.
