The exhortation ‘Remember, you found it on ‘Yellowpages.com.eg' sounds almost like a reproach, especially with regard to the Automobile and Touring Club of Egypt (ATCE), which is located at number 10. Not the famous namesake in London, the official residence of the British Prime Minister, but Kasr El Nil Street in the now quieter downtown district. This writer first quizzed trusty Google about the ATCE, whereupon I was directed to their website for a quick ‘shufti' – there you are: a fragment of Arabic dialect that is now part of colloquial English courtesy of His Majesty's Armed Forces circa 1914. Apart from the title, which was in English, the incomplete rubric on the site was in Arabic, as one might expect from electronic wizardry in this part of the world. There was a long section on the history of the ATCE in Arabic beckoning the user's attention. However, there was an ‘English' option, which was clicked, but the machine hesitated, and after a few encouraging signs such as the fan running at full pelt and a slight brightening of the screen, the history of the ATCE in Arabic refused to budge. Here goes: “The growth of the Egyptian Automobile Club dates back to before 1924 with the beginning of Egyptians' interest in cars since there arose the need for the existence of an entity that would undertake the organisation of matters pertaining to them (automobiles) and the encouragement of their use and because of this began the thinking of setting up an automobile club." “The fact was that the idea of this club was not an Egyptian initiative since European countries had witnessed the creation of such clubs in previous years and European clubs were hugely popular, as their number of members testifies. “The first entity concerned with automobiles was the ‘Automobile Club' that was founded in 1905, the first..." Blah-blah-blah. Look, the long and the short of it was that it was foreigners who founded the ATCE, whose name was changed in 1956 to the ‘Egyptian Automobile Club. No names, no dates, no prominent members, nothing. So let's leave it at that for the moment. Sometime around about half past 1985, wearing a faded black gallabiyya, a wizened, altitudinally challenged man who looked older than the Giza pyramids, went ‘Pssst' in our ears with a promise of something the garage of which he was responsible. ‘Aye-aye?' we thought, as we followed our host through the sumptuously uncut hedge that surrounded an apartment block that must have been built when King Farouq was in shorts, down a slope where our way was blocked by a metal garage door. On opening the said door and flicking a switch, a furtive light from two half-hearted fluorescent tubes in the ceiling descended onto a Citroen, two Mercedes, a Rolls-Royce, a Lamborghini and a Ferrari that would not have been out of place in a museum or costume drama set in the early 1900s. The vehicles were said to have been in working order, although our host did not have ignition keys. The tyres were inflated and the bodywork gleamed as if ready for an evening spin to the Corniche, what! Such vehicles were locked away as memories of better times had been shut away in the mental recesses of the generation before the excesses of nationalisation, before Omar Effendi became Omar, Offend-me, and when cotton ginning was controlled by the gin-and-tonic sundowner social stratum. Thirty years on, and what of the Fiat that is covered in rags and resting on four wooden stools, since the wheels were removed? The carcass of this once near-noble runabout takes up most of the pavement, forcing the hapless pedestrian to walk in the roadway. Fortunately, this is a side street? And what of the other Fiat that is rusting away in dust of ages on one of the approaches to Hegaz Square, near, coincidentally, to a Heliopolis branch of Omar Offend-me? The Mercedes with the Aswan number plate was once a permanent feature of the intersection of three side streets behind this writer's residence. It has been spirited away, probably to another side street somewhere in the same suburb. So many seemingly irreparable vehicles languish on the streets of Cairo that they are nuisances to pedestrians and eyesores to residents. As for the minibus at the junction of Abdel Aziz Fahmy and Shahid Mohamed Lotfy streets, that monstrosity created a blind junction that caused a thousand accidents. Perhaps the ATCE can be galvanised into action and rid the suburbs of Africa's largest city of what might be the biggest collection of scrap metal, or, more romantically, vehicles crying out for restoration, thereby rendering Cairo a capital worthy of classic cars, just like Havana, Cuba, or Caracas, Venezuela. Think of the benefits: local craftsmen could create spare parts for these derelicts. All manner of modifications could be made to accommodate everything from new carburetors to new headlights. Let's be really trendy and appeal to the aspirations of the trendy environmentalist lobby, since it take thirty gazillion carbon emissions to produce a new care, whereas a restored item can use on 0.5 of an emission. Besides, consider the reduction in import costs for new cars. A lick of paint, a bit of welding here and there, a visit to the bang-bang man (panel beater) and, voila! Une nouvelle bagnole! But for those who do not care about the junk littering the streets, keep bringing in the Opals and the Mercs with cash no one has.
