Cab Ride

12:10 PM, Wednesday, February 22, 2012

As I plopped into the front seat of my taxi, I was instantly taken aback by the racy music video that I found playing on top of the glove box in front of me.

“Ay da?!” (what’s that?!) I asked, with an expression of mock-amazement.
“A DVD player!” my cab driver replied. “Do you like it?”
“It’s nice” I responded, turning to look out the window just in time to see a mass of oncoming traffic cascading towards us. Unperturbed (this is a normal phenomenon on Cairo’s streets), I turned back to the driver, who was looking at me with a big grin on his face.

“Are you Catholic?” he asked.

This was a bit of an odd question, not because of its religious element but because of the fact that he asked me specifically if I was Catholic. In fact, asking foreigners about their religion is not an uncommon occurrence on Cairo’s streets and taxicabs, but usually when someone asks me the question they’ll phrase it as “are you Muslim?”

“No, I’m not Catholic.” I responded, “I’m Jewish.”
“You’re Jewish!?” he looked at me with an expression of disbelief, “I’m Jewish too!”

That moment was quite possibly one of the oddest I have had in Egypt. I looked at him, did a double-take, and the first thing that popped into my mind as a response was: “No, you’re not!”

I know for a fact that there are no Egyptian Jewish men still living in the country. About a dozen old women, all of whom are over 70, is what remains of a once flourishing Jewish community. I have attended a few Jewish functions during my time in Cairo (primarily for the food), and the only men in the room are expatriates, the boisterous Egyptian lawyer who does all the legal work for the Jewish community, and a smattering of security guards.

“Yes, I am Jewish!” my driver replied. “We’re from the same religion!”
“Ok,” I said, skeptically, “but you’re Christian, right?”
“Yes, of course!” he replied.

Just as I breathed a sigh of relief at clearing up that issue, he let forth with a second statement that was equally as odd as the first: “I migrated to the U.S. two months ago!”

“You what?”
“Yes, two months ago, I went to the embassy and gave them my documents, you know, all that, and they told me to check back in a few months to see if I could migrate.”
“Oh, I think what you mean to say is that you applied for the green card lottery.” I replied. I didn’t want to sink his hopes, so instead of telling him that he had about a 1 in 200 chance of winning, I simply said “May God be with you” (an Egyptian phrase meaning “good luck”).

“I really want to leave this country!” he declared to me a few moments later.

I had a sense that I knew where this conversation was going. I have had a few Christian cab drivers in the past few months who conveyed similar sentiments: simply put, a large percentage of Egyptian Christians wish that the revolution had never happened. They felt secure in the Mubarak era, happy with a sort of “live-and-let-live” agreement with the largely Muslim – but secular – Mubarak regime. Instead of focusing their efforts on gaining influence in government, Christians occupied themselves with developing a robust network of businesses throughout the country. As a result, they control a disproportionate share of the wealth in today’s Egypt.

“Egypt is going down the drain,” he continued, “all those crazy Islamists have taken power and they hate Christians. I don’t trust them at all! I would even move to Israel if I could!”

Huh. Maybe this cabbie’s assertion that he was Jewish had some unintended nugget of truth to it…I was too dumbfounded to respond with anything other than a bewildered laugh.

“So, who did you vote for in the parliamentary elections?” I asked, although I realized a second after I asked him that there was only one possible answer.

“The Egyptian bloc,” he replied, speaking of the bloc of liberal parties headed by Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris’ “Free Egyptians Party.” Indeed, if not for the Christian vote, the liberal parties (including the Egyptian bloc) would have almost zero representation in Parliament.

“And do you make any distinction between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis?” I asked. “In my opinion,” I added, “the Muslim Brotherhood is much more pragmatic and moderate than the extremist Salafis.”

“No, all of them are terrible.”

As we climbed onto the bridge linking Giza to Zamalek, the island in the middle of the Nile on which we have classes, the conversation turned back to religion.

“So, tell me, do Jews worship Jesus and the Virgin Mary?” he asked
“No,” I replied, “Jesus and Mary don’t have anything to do with Jewish theology.”
“Really, so then who do you worship? Idols?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Just like his previous statement incorrectly claiming that he was Jewish followed by his expressing a desire to move to Israel, this one also held a nugget of twisted truth. The Jews did, in fact, once worship idols. In the story of the golden calf (which, coincidentally, was my torah portion for my Bar Mitzvah), the Jews – Egyptian Jews, moreover – began to worship a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai while they waited for Moses to return from his communion with God at the summit. When Moses returned with the ten commandments in hand, he flung them down in anger at the sight of his people worshiping an idol.

Given the driver’s complete lack of knowledge about Judaism, however, I decided that it would be best not to point out this irony: “No,” I replied, “Jews worship God, the same one that Christians and Muslims do, but they’re still waiting for his prophet to return.”

“Ah, I understand,” he said with a knowing nod, although I suspect that he still thinks that Jews are some breakaway sect of Christianity.

That was the end of our deep conversation, although I would be remiss if I didn’t mention two more outlandish statements that he made in the last five minutes of the trip. First, after asking me if I had a lot of Egyptian girlfriends and hearing my response that no, unfortunately, I did not, he insisted that he would change that.

“I will bring you dozens of girls from Shubra [a working class neighborhood in Cairo that is home to a mix of Christians and Muslims]!”
“Thank you,” I replied, “may God keep you” (an Arabic expression that basically is a polite way of saying “thanks but no thanks”).

A few moments later he turned to me and said with complete earnesty:
“Michael, I want to go to Israel so badly that I would even become an Israeli spy here in Egypt if they would grant me citizenship!”

I can say with complete certainty that that statement is the single most shocking thing I have ever had someone tell me in Cairo. Talk of Zionist conspiracies and espionage, of course, is one of the favorite pastimes of the Egyptian media, and just as unfortunate is the extent to which many Egyptians – both Muslims and Christians – take what they hear in the media as the pure, unadulterated truth. To understand the absurdity of this comment, just imagine an American coming up to you and declaring that he had a deep-seated desire to move to Afghanistan and join the Taliban.

Weirder than weird. And also completely hilarious. Welcome in Egypt.