Death by Taxi

We live by cab. Due to bloody f*&*&%^ complications with Harry’s drivers’ license and my papers still in process, we are stuck taking taxis everywhere (since there is no other public transport as the train will not be completed until 2010). Thankfully cabs are really cheap, but sadly, there are only 5000 for a city of 1.3 million. This leads to long lines at the malls on the weekends and potential disaster if you take a cab to a location that is not near a major intersection or landmark. This also means interacting with quite a variety of individuals driving cabs, mostly from Kerela, Pakistan, other parts of India, or Afghanistan. All but one have been men (the Lady’s taxis are driven by women). Funnily enough, the non-Indians (read: non-Gulf Muslims) often appear a little afraid of me.

Let me describe some of our more memorable cabbies:

1. The guy from Waziristan (north-eastern Pakistan—current Taliban region). This one was probably our favorite. Harry got in this young guy’s cab after work and came to pick me up at our cousins on the way to do some car shopping. When Harry came in the house to get me he said, just to warn you, I have a preachy-touchy Taliban-type in the car. He has been lecturing me in Urdu about the evils of alcohol and loose white women since I got in there. I better not hold your hand.

I got in the car and the poor chap’s eyes practically popped out of his head. He looked really scared, gave a half-hearted grin, and then proceeded to get completely lost twice on the way out of the neighborhood we were in, finally just driving across an empty field and a pedestrian sidewalk to get to the main road. Then we went to Toyota, and he kept trying to chat in broken English on the way, which was really sweet actually since he still looked really nervous. We asked him to wait at Toyota, went in and looked etc., and when we came back we found him napping on the backseat.

He jumped up, we all got in, and then we asked him to take us to Honda. He looked a little panicked, then drove off, took a right, and got lost in an industrial area. We drove around in circles for a while, before finally landing back where we started at Toyota, where he backtracked along the freeway as he should have the first time. After a couple minutes he came to a screeching halt in front of a store, said something about “asking” and went into the store. Harry and I are totally cracking up by this point, and even more so when he comes back and asks Harry in Urdu to go in and ask for directions in English since he did not understand what the person told him.

By this time the poor guy is looking really stressed, so Harry and I decide to go to Nissan, which is right there, and when we come back we ask him to take us home. This proves to be a problem --- and here is the death part: in the process of getting onto the freeway—which can be really confusing, the guy is driving over 60 miles an hour when he realizes he has just been merged away from the freeway. Rather than take the exit and backtrack, he comes to a screeching halt right in the space between the freeway and the lanes separating off to the right (you know, where you see those orange barrels of water to help prevent fatalities on freeways). Cars are zooming by on both sides, and we have come to a screeching halt, almost not in time to avoid the road barrier—I screech myself, thinking it is really over for us. The guy looks back at us with a sheepish grin, he and Harry exchange a “silly women” look, and he proceeds to merge onto the freeway from a dead stop. By the time we got home I had started breathing again, and Harry tipped the guy extra because overall, this was quite a night to remember.

2. Pakistanis in general seem to be the best cabbies to have. The guys we have had from Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, and rural areas are much more informative and talkative than other nationalities. Some of it may be a better command of English—also, a lot of these guys are trained professionals like engineers, they just can’t work as engineers here. Overall, they are really fun, like to talk about politics, don’t seem afraid or disdainful of me, and like to joke about how “we are all Indians” with Harry. If you have a choice, go for a Pakistani cabbie here!!

3. Young Guys from Kerela and northern-India. I am sad to say these guys are the worst of the lot. Especially with me by myself. I actually had one guy yelling at me because I told him a wrong turn on the way to a well known landmark that he did not seem to know for some reason. Asshole (I paid him in single dirham coins—each is larger than a quarter, so fifteen or so is pretty heavy to carry around). Language could be the problem, but actually it seems like more of a power struggle. If I get in there and act like a bossy, imperious bitch, everything is fine. I don’t like not being nice to people who are doing crap jobs, but I’m learning how to handle these guys.

4. The guy from North-Eastern Afghanistan. This guy had great English. And if his story is to be believed, he is a self-taught (by movie) rural guy from the part of Afghanistan where there is such a struggle between the Americans, Afghanis, and local drug lords/Taliban. In other words (and as he put it) if you work for the Americans, the Taliban kill you. If you work for the Taliban, the Americans kill you. No matter what, somebody will kill you. The little guy always gets screwed. I told him alot of people in the US are aware of the problem, but don’t know what to do about it. His story, true or not, was good enough for an extra tip (you don’t actually have to tip at all—cabbies are salaried here). And he asked us all to pray for his family.

6. The Syrian. Another favorite. But first, some background. Dobby traffic is terrible. TERRIBLE! Not only does everyone have a car, the roads are a weird combination of beautiful, large freeways, tiny back streets, and the abominable, multi-light round-about. It’s like the German autobahn met the Arc de Triumph round-about in Paris and had a love-child destined to carry 800,000 cars per day. The net result of all of this is that everything is actually quite close, but it can take an hour to go a kilometer if you must pass through a round-about (which are totally superfluous—these round-abouts are used where two large roads meet at a cross intersection – one light would be fine, instead, you must go around the round-about through several lights to continue on the road you were on in the first place—all so a circle of green grass with some statue or fountain can “beautify” Dobby).

Further, Dobby has over 250 traffic accidents per day, exacerbating gridlock like mad. Our present apartment looks over the main freeway right in a major business section of town, where rush-hour begins at 4 and lasts until 7. Everyday we have an accident outside our building. A loud screech, loud crash and then horns. It is so inevitable that we now notice when there is not an accident. How crazy is that?

Anyway, add poorly designed roads, traffic accidents, and pervasive construction (including the elevated train) and you have a recipe for disaster in my book. Which brings me to the Syrian. We got in this guy’s cab on the Eid holiday, after waiting in line for an hour at the Italian mall. He was a peaceful, older guy, and I thought he was Iraqi from his accent, but it turned out he was Syrian. After driving into the inevitable traffic jam outside the mall I asked him if this was Eid traffic or normal traffic. He looked at me strangely and said, but Madam, this is normal. I commented that so much traffic was so irritating, etc., etc. He got this humorous glint in his eye and said:

“Ahh, but this is Dobby. And Dobby with no traffic wouldn’t be beautiful.”

The Zen master has spoken. I ruminated on this for a while and have now adopted it as my driving mantra. Dobby without traffic is Dobby without beauty. Traffic is beautiful. To live happily here, which I want for some time, I will chant this to myself while taking deep breaths on my hour turns through the superfluous round-abouts. I think it will do wonders for my health.