[ilds] a benison to a writer I love

[csligh]

http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Lifestyle/Article.aspx?id=853647

> A relative destination
> Accidental tourist Published:Oct 05, 2008 / Times South Africa
>
> Lin Sampson
>
> You can tell a taxi driver where you want to go, but you can’t make 
> him go there.
>
> I am standing outside the Khan el Khalili, the largest suq in Cairo, 
> holding a copy of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet and looking 
> for a taxi to take me to Alexandria. I finally engage Mohammed, a very 
> tall man in a turban with a tiny little car, which owes its genetics 
> to some union between a Peugeot and a Mini.
>
> Mohammed turns out to be an extreme- driving enthusiast, thrusting the 
> car forward as if he is wearing it on his feet. His car is more like a 
> small room on wheels, very plush, with purple cushions that have been 
> marinated in sweet cologne and lots of little gnomes and rubber ducks 
> stuck to the roof. On the dashboard is a large doll with china blue 
> eyes. When Mohammed hits her in the stomach, she screams. This makes 
> him laugh, but she appears to be as alarmed by his driving as I am. 
> When he goes over bumps, her eyes open wide.
>
> Mo is chatty. “Do you own your house?” he asks. “How much you earn? 
> Have you daughter? Is she blonde? Does she own house?”
>
> I tell him I am going to Alexandria as a benison to a writer I love 
> and that I intend to stay at the Cecil Hotel, where the heroine 
> Justine laid her head.
>
> “Before we get to Alexandria,” I say chattily, “we should pass Lake 
> Mareotis. That is where the famous duck shoot took place, do you 
> remember?”
>
> Mohammed does a quick sort of double declutching manoeuvre and throws 
> the car to the side. A little later, he points grandly to a cesspit 
> beside the road with burning rubbish around it and says grandly, “Lake 
> Mareotis. Ducks dead.”
>
> After Lake Mareotis, Mohammed begins to drive very slowly. We pass a 
> sign saying Zagazig, and he starts jabbing furiously at his cellphone. 
> At one point, he stops and flags down a car, plugging his cell into 
> their charger, which they seem to accept calmly as he puts his foot on 
> their accelerator to keep up the revs.
>
> Later he stops in front of a house. “Uncle house, very good man, no 
> wife,” he says. Uncle’s house is made of large cement blocks and 
> appears to have no roof.
>
> Inside, Uncle crouches on the ground, giving the one chair a miss. His 
> house is full of dolls and shiny old Christmas-tree ornaments. 
> “Welcome, welcome,” he says.
>
> “We are trying to get to Alexandria,” I begin. Mohammed interrupts 
> quickly.
>
> “Welcome,” he shouts. Uncle, instead of having no wife, appears to 
> have a surfeit of them. As we talk I can see hundreds of women in the 
> back yard bending over fires and stirring pots, no doubt all in the 
> heady service of Uncle, who has a whimsical little tickly moustache 
> and a gold ring the size of a naartjie. A wife brings in 
> diabetes-inducing cups of mint tea and Uncle plays a typewriter for me 
> as if it is a piano.
>
> Then, Mohammed drives me back to Cairo — clearly, he seems determined 
> to miss Alexandria at all costs, perhaps because he doesn’t really 
> know where it is. W e arrive at 2am. The word “haggle” looms 
> (something I always dread).
>
> “Look, Mohammed,” I say, “I engaged you to take me to Alexandria. I 
> landed up in Zigazag.”
>
> “Zagazig,” says Mohammed, “not Zigazag, very important town with 
> university.”
>
> “I pay you half,” I say, resorting to good old colonial pidgin. 
> Mohammed draws from his pocket a strange thing, which looks like a 
> cake wrapped in an old leaf. I’m not sure what it is, so I take a bite 
> and hand it back to him.
>
> He puts it in his mouth, lights the end, and takes a long interior haul.
>
> Then — and this is why I love Egyptians — he says, “Mohammed welcomes 
> you to Egypt and takes you to visit family. No cost. Welcome, welcome.”
>
> He adds wistfully, “You not really blonde, too old. Next time bring 
> daughter.”