A sledge hammer is never near to hand when you want one, is it? By the way, ‘sledge hammer' in Arabic is ‘shakuush kibiir 2awi', in case you need to rush to Gomhuria Street and buy one, return to the scene of a near accident and apply this tool to the offending vehicle. By the way, ‘offending vehicle' in Arabic is ‘il-3arabiyya-lli-byissuu2ha magnuun', which is a bit of a mouthful, but not half as challenging as the mouthful of Anglo-Saxon hurled at the foolish driver who decided that the quickest way around a roundabout is not to go around it. Rather, this person, who must have had sand for brains, considered himself above consideration for others, especially pedestrians, rounded the central reservation where the street meets the roundabout, and sped in the opposite direction along the street. As a pedestrian, I am extra-vigilant, bearing in mind that the inconsiderate few consider themselves fireproof. However, since this minority is often male, their egos are as fragile as crumbling plasterwork. Even though I was unharmed as I watched this lunatic continue his journey, I conferred this person with a title on the lines of behaviour designed to propogate the species and a simile for ‘throw lightly', of which the initial letters spelt FT – the Financial Times was furthest from my mind at the time. He heard this epithet and abruptly slowed as I heard him call out, in English, ‘What?' It was at that precise moment I visualised myself telling this person: ‘Speak to the shakuush kibiir 2awi, Sunshine...' Plenty of cyberspace is taken up with bloggers' accounts of crossing the road in non-European countries and in Egypt, which, according to the British Daily Mail on January 28, 2002, “[p]resumably [...]has a Highway Code, but no one seems to take any notice of it." Traffic lights are ignored, unless the burly police officer with a walkie-talkie is on the crossroads and looking balefully at anyone who dares look at him. As for lane discipline, forget it, as there are neither proper lanes with arrows and things, nor discipline, known locally as ‘nizaam'. “A particular Egyptian eccentricity is a refusal to use headlights at night," the paper added. This writer once asked a motorist why he persisted in his wish to remain unseen. Did he think he was piloting a stealth bomber? Not at all. He was saving electricity. Ha! Another environmentalist on his way to the fire. I bet that if they went to Hell, they would confront Satan himself about all those carbon emissions. One wonders what an environment-friendly Inferno might be like. Sustainable torments for the damned and all that. Imagine the headlines: Lucifer eyes wave power for lower regions. Hell to go green (with envy) – and only six cardinal sins to go until the next nuclear accident. Even so, no highway code, no lane discipline, and no lighting for moving vehicles by night, which all “means that pedestrians should take extra care". After months of negotiating Hegaz Sreet from the square of the same name to Midan Heliopolis, avoiding the pack of wild dogs, whose coats are the same colour and whose tails curl in exactly the same spiral across their rear ends, dodging fast-moving vehicles because the narrow strip of pavement was taken up by a low hoarding for advertisements by the mobile phone server we love to hate, a pedestrian causeway was laid six months ago. Indeed, it is like a causeway as it sits more than one foot above the recently rendered surface that has been planted with grass turf. Looking along this sunlit pathway from the end of the street, you enjoy a study in perspective as the tesselated footway narrows to a near vanishing point at the Heliopolis Hospital end. As they say here, this facility is ‘to7fa'. But with ‘to7fa' comes temptation for the motorised twit on two wheels. Can you not hear the ‘eerk-eerk' of his warning system? You think he is on the roadway travelling west. Turn around, and there he is, ‘eerk-ing' a pedestrian as she moves quickly aside to let the two-stroke ‘tosseur' (a term popular during the Napoleonic occupation of Egypt denoting foolish person) putter past. For the motorcyclist who enjoys a challenge, how about riding along the pavement in Nozha Street. Beat the jams, show you are on top – Mr Riwesh (Cool) himself. Pizza getting to cold for comfort, despite the gaily painted container bolted onto your machine? Never mind those lesser mortals on foot, bowl them aside – or over – as you streak along the sidewalk on the way to your satisfied customer and a hefty tip. You can hear the opening bars of ‘Born to be Wild' and ‘Speed King' throbbing in the background, probably in time to the throbbing of the wound inflicted by such two-wheeler terrors. Forget about rules and Highway Code. Television campaigns have no effect. Remember when the seat belt law came into force on 1st January 2001? A year later it was enforced – for three weeks. Legislation in the name of safety is regarded as mere “ink on paper" and such an attitude emanates from weak enforcement, let alone awareness campaigns to educate the road-using public to think of others. Only when several people are injured, even killed, by a motorcyclist or scooter rider. A pressure group could form. They could spend days producing placards calling for pedestrians' rights. They could develop a voice that would be heard by the powers that be. Unfortunately, this will be to no avail for one of two reasons. Either, a motorcyclist-scooter rider opposition lobby group will rise up and pelt pedestrian protestors with brickbats and molotoffs, and be paid to do so. Or, the pressure group will organise itslef, hire office space, and spend weeks sitting around a polished table arguing about who will be the chairman and whether full-stops should be placed outside parentheses or within.
