Uneasy Alliances

I step out of my taxi in front of Cairo International. We have arrived in record time, aided by the earliness of the hour and the big Eid holiday, which together conspired against the perpetual Cairene traffic to make for empty streets and uncannily clear blue skies. Fortunate for me. I needed the help, having been betrayed by a negligent alarm clock (surely it had turned itself off of its own accord) and woken up 45 minutes later than originally planned. 15 minutes to stow some last minute items into a carry-on and personal item, eat something that passes for breakfast, and be out the door.

Ok, 20 minutes.

And wash the dishes I had eaten my breakfast on, and brush my teeth?

25 minutes.

And then the damn elevator always takes forever.

So when I flagged down a cab from among the smattering of vehicles on the road at seven fifteen on a big holiday morning, and he did not immediately challenge me to state what might constitute appropriate fare but rather sped along airport-bound post haste, needless to say I counted myself in the good graces of whatever diety (from among the agnostic’s pantheon of deities) doles out the fates of travelers.

My good cheer was of such tenacity that I happily turned the other way when my taxi driver stopped along the way to fill up on gas (in Cairo, a common enough thing to do in the middle of taxi-ing passengers from point A to point B).

So finally as I step out of my taxi into a brisk wind under clear skies, I happily overpay the taxi driver by ten pounds, wish him happy holidays, and then stride purposefully into the terminal. I take one step in, and have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve been dropped off at the wrong terminal.

I must have exuded uncertainty, because at that moment someone comes up and asked me, “Excuse me, where are you going? Let me see your ticket.”

He is dressed in a dark heavy vest and sharp khaki trousers, so that without close inspection they give the impression of official attire.

“Um, to New York?” I hand him my printed itinerary.

“Wrong Terminal.”

A vague sinking feeling in my stomach sets in. The two terminals are an unseemly distance apart, perhaps thirty minutes worth of walking, and I have no idea if there's official airport transportation between the two. “Ok, no problem. I can take a taxi to the other terminal,” I say to him in Arabic.

“Hmm… take a taxi you say” he mutters as if to himself, “Come with me please.”

I hesitate a split second.

“Come on, come on!” he says.

I follow him back outside, across the street to the parking lot. We pass up several waiting taxi drivers, and the sinking feeling in my stomach is now somewhere in the vicinity of my feet. My itinerary still in hand, he gets into the driver’s seat of an empty cab, I obligingly follow waiting to be willingly scammed.

We drive about two minutes, just long enough to be really inconveniently far from any terminal, when he stops the car.

“Listen, how much will you pay? Because normally it is one hundred pounds.”

“One hundred pounds? Noooo. That is a lot! Twenty pounds.”

“Ok, fifty pounds.”

“Ohh, to great sorrow, I only have twenty pounds.”

I am lying and he probably knows it.

“Twenty pounds?! Twenty pounds how?”

“Twenty is a lot, my friend. I would normally pay no more than five pounds for the distance you are driving me, or even four!”

“Oh, but this is not normal. Let me tell you. Fifteen pounds for the ticket to park at Terminal 1, and then another fifteen for the other terminal, that is thirty pounds!”

“And also you want me to pay twenty just to drive from here to there? It’s all in the same airport! Am I right or what?”

“Yes, yes, it’s the same airport, but what else will you do?”

“Enough! I will just walk there.”

“No, there’s not enough time!”

“I don’t care. I will walk, it’s not far.”

“No, no, walking’s no good, it’s not allowed.”

But whether to forestall the threat of my hand on the passenger side door handle, or to improve his bargaining position, my unlikely companion starts the car again, and resumes the drive between terminals.

“Who ARE you anyways?” I ask, hoping to improve my own position.

“Me? I am an airport worker.”

I scoff. “You work at the airport? But what is this? You drive a private taxi just like any other taxicab driver. No, you are just a normal taxicab driver who was waiting at the airport to cheat people.”

“No, seriously, I am a worker at the airport. Here, you want to see evidence?”

“Yeah, let me see this evidence.”

“Here, here, take this, look, you read Arabic?”

“Of course I read Arabic.”

“There, my ID card, what does it say? See, where does it say I work?”

I take it in hand and scan it a moment.

“It says you work for the Egyptian Department of Security.”

“See? See? I told you.”

“But what does the Department of Security have to do with the airport? Nothing, there is not relationship at all between the airport and the Department of Security. It should say ‘airport’ or ‘transportation’ or something.”

“No, no, that’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“What?”

“That I used to be a police officer.”

“What does that mean? That, also there is no relationship with anything!”

A brief silence reigns. Each of us withdraw to consider how we made out during that skirmish. I think I may have pulled slightly ahead, but not enough to considerably decrease my fare without putting up a big fight.

Boy I’m tired. This is not the way to begin 33 hours worth of flights, layovers, and one night fitfully sleeping in an LAX terminal.

I make a decision contrary to the principles of a foreigner living in Egypt and trying to pose as something more than just another tourist.

“Tell you what,” I interrupt the silence. “If the terminal is the right one, and I will go ask someone at the terminal if it is…”

“You want to ask someone at the terminal if it is the right place? No problem.”

“I will ask someone that I choose, and if they say it’s the right place, I will pay you fifty.”

He takes that in for a moment before responding:

“No, if it is the right terminal, you will pay one hundred.”

I start to see red and want to scream “if you are purportedly already taking me to the correct terminal why should I pay you MORE for not doubly cheating me and taking me to the incorrect one for God knows what disgusting money-making ruse.”

Of course, all that comes up against the language barrier, and my ability to speak Arabic is significantly worsened when I’m angry. Fortunate for me because in the second it takes me to collect myself, I realize he’s joking with me.

I laugh and slap him on the back. He chuckles with me. Neither of us makes mention of the fact that I am only supposed to have twenty on me. We all feel good about ourselves.

“But really. Fifty pounds only, right?”

Rather than enter the parking lot, he pulls up in the lane in front of the terminal to drop me off. A nearby police officer shouts at him, “Hey, you can’t park there!”

My wily companion steps over to soothe the airport guard. As I take advantage of the momentary confusion to move towards the terminal and verify that it is indeed the right one, I notice that a second police officer has intervened on my friend’s behalf—apparently the two of them are somewhat aquainted with one another, likely through a series of similar encounters whereby no doubt a bribe is handed over for the officer’s forbearance.

I make it inside, a few steps ahead of my apprehensive taxicab driver who doesn’t want his fish to escape once he’s gone through all the trouble to reel him in. One glance at the departures board is all it takes.

“Alright, you were right, this is the place.”

“Great.”

“So, here you go.” I pull a bill out of my wallet.

“Oh, you want to pay a hundred?”

“No, I pay you fifty. Do you have change for a hundred?”

“Noo, there is no change.”

“Well, that’s ok, we’ll find change somewhere here.”

Meanwhile the police officer has started yelling at him again.

“Please hurry up.”

Out of a vengeful sense of having been unduly cheated, or maybe a petty sense of cruelty, I staidly march across the terminal floor.

“Excuse me sir, do you have change? For a hundred? No? Ok thank you. Excuse me, Madam, do you have change? Oh, no? Ok, thank you anyways, thank you very... very... much........... alot.”

“Hurry, Hurry, faster!”

“Well, I need change first.”

“Ok, ok, I will make change. Here, give it to me.”

I hand it over to him.

“Wait! You still have my ticket. Give it to me first.”

He hands me back my itinerary and then rapidly rushes about the terminal, shouting:

“Change? Change? Change for a hundred?”

He zooms about, a wild zig-zag on the hunt for two fifties, ten tens, four twenties and two tens, anything to sum up to a hundred in a country chronically suffering from a shortage of exact change.

I of course zoom around right behind him, a little shadow intent on getting my rightfully owed change.

Somehow in the course of this mayhem he picks up, and bargains with a second passenger who is looking for a ride from the airport back into Cairo. Then we, all three of us, end up back outside and he is asking the shouting police officer if he would just give him a hundred pounds worth of change so he could be on his way and wouldn’t violate parking codes if only he could just get correct change, because the foreigner won’t let him go until…

And whether it’s a miracle, or merely because of a mutual interest in having the offending taxicab be on its way, the police officer starts counting out small change in tens, fives, and, at the last, in ones.

I see my taxicab driver slip the officer a ten into his breast pocket. Then he comes over to me, pausing only to settle his new passenger into the cab, and rapidly flip-counts through the change from the officer.

“Five, ten, twenty, thirty, thirty-five, fourty, fifty. Ok?”

I must have looked skeptical.

“Five, ten, twenty, thirty, thirty-five, fourty, fifty. Fine?”

Whatever. At the least I expect him to short me five, for half of the bribe used to pay off the guard.

“Ok, you cheater,” I say, trying to sound good-natured rather than resentful.

He gives me a half grin, like he’s not sure if I’ve been genuinely offended or if it’s all within the expected limits of the unspoken agreement between Egyptians and foreigners who are in the know.

I give him another slap on the back and tell him thanks.

It’s an odd set of uneasy alliances. What can the Egyptian do? If he says, look I need the money and it doesn’t make much of a difference to you, can the foreigner then be relied upon, out of good faith or generosity, to simply accept paying more than is normal, and/or would he in doing so be made to feel no better than a beggar? As for the foreigner, if he says, I don’t know the prices or the system, and I know the money means more to you than to me so I just want to pay something reasonable, will he then trust the Egyptian not to overcharge him outrageously, and/or will he become no more than a fool to be taken advantage of? Thus, instead we play out our little prearranged theater: the one as if he were merely the average affronted customer demanding only his due in fair prices; the other as if he were only charging the natural costs of services rendered; each party’s respective dignity, or at least the appearance of it, maintained in the fragile web of self-apparent lies and transparent dissemblances.

A check-in counter and several security and customs checkpoints later, in the sterile tourist-friendly safety of the inner terminal, I slouch into a bench, and await my flight. Though the battle is long over, I am bitten by an idle curiosity to know the final score.

I dip my hand into my coat pocket and draw out a wad of discolored bills of varying denominations.

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty-five, forty…

I stick the money back into my pocket, hold back a laugh, and grin into space.

He shorted me ten.

The scamp.