Last week I wrote about how the world seems to be becoming more and more risk averse. Like this occasion in Egypt back in for instance. I am not at all sure that I would be prepared to take such risks now. As Abdullah swung the rattling wreck that had once been a car across six lanes of frenzied traffic, death or serious injury seemed a certainty.
Incredibly, as if by magic, a path opened up before us and we passed unscathed through the honking, seething, fume belching nightmare that passes for rush hour on the roads of Cairo. We had found Abdullah the previous evening when we hailed his taxi near our hotel. After a couple of near-death experiences on the roads around the city, he had seemed an oasis of calm and common sense in a trade that appeared to be populated by the crazed and the kamikaze.
We had booked him for a day. Abdullah glanced over his shoulder at us cowering on the back seat. A smile flickered across his world-weary face.
After this blindingly obvious statement he went on to tell us that he had been driving a taxi around Cairo for 35 years. That was it. We continued with our day out, with Abdullha expertly rocketing across blind junctions, swerving away from last minute danger and then exploring the back streets and markets, crawling down dirt-track roads full of donkeys, carts, bicycles and locals apparently unconcerned and clearly oblivious to any potential risk as they wandering haphazardy into our path.
It was the only answer. Certainly his car had survived against all odds. It appeared to have once been a big old eight seat Peugeot but some er modifications had taken place. It had also led a life that had left it looking like something that in this country you might find dumped in a disused quarry. The inside door handles had been torn off, the gear stick was just a metallic stump and the dashboard was dead.
