Interpreting

Horis, son of Orisis

January 9, 2012

The Language of Cars

I’m often asked if I drive in other countries. My answer is “almost never.” I don’t know the local dialect.

 I got caught speeding a few months back and had to take an online traffic school. Six hours of “please-shoot-me-in-my-face” tedium. Anyways, one of the questions I found ridiculous was, “Horns should be used to tell people to get out of the way.” Of course the answer is “no” (from my ethnocentric perspective) and I got the answer right. In America, we use the horn to signify only 3 things:

“Eminent danger!”

“YO! I’m downstairs; don’t make me get out of my car to ring your goddamn doorbell!”

“Fuck you!”

It’s a common mistake to think that a honk is a honk, for each country, sometimes each region within a country, has its own lexicon of toot. With the varying definitions come entirely different thoughts and behaviors about driving.  I find in the West, we tend to be clumsy with the horn, even nescient. Like most things, the more you engage the evolved your skill level. Horn communication carries subtleties often missed to our untrained ears: cadence, pitch, tempo, and duration. There’s the single tap, which can mean, “I’m here.” There’s the double tap, which can mean, “I’m here” or “I’m passing.” I appreciate the long followed by several short blasts, which means, “I’m coming through and you’re going to blink first!”

Unwritten laws appear to loosely govern hierarchy. In descending order: trucks, expensive cars, clunkers, donkey or camel carriages, domesticated livestock and finally, pedestrians. Non-beasts of burden (cats and dogs) might get a courtesy break. I was a bit shocked by the amount of road carnage; vultures do not go hungry in this country. Apparently, according to my military friend, there is a distinction in the pedestrian category between males and females. One of the U.N. peacekeepers hit a Bedouin girl. The peacekeepers were expecting all hell to break loose with the family, who actually turned out to not be very bothered since, “it was their daughter and not a son.”

Jan 10, 2012

There is a prime corner piece of real estate in Luxor. It’s literally a plot of land with dirt, tables, chairs, a stray dog, and lots of tea, the Egyptian kind, in which a scoop of loose granules is added to a cup of hot water with sugar. The bits settle, then you drink. My waiter is Saud. We start talking politics; they LOVE talking politics here. Egyptians are savvier than the average American and certainly care more. Saud says Mubarak was a bad, bad man: “Things are too expensive and he didn’t take care of the people.” I hear this over and over again. The military that we finance are the only apparent system that works and is well-funded. To my surprise, Saud says Kadafi was not a bad man, “He was half good, half bad.” He went on to say, though the Libyans had no freedoms, they had affordable food, fuel, and housing. Saud works 12 hours a day 6 days a week and makes 400 Egyptian pounds a month- that’s about US $75. To get a visa to work abroad an Egyptian has to pay a bribe, about US $200 to work in Saudi Arabia or US $2000 for Europe.

Saud warms up to me and says he thinks all the tourists are looking for sex. I wondered to myself, “Is he hitting on me?” He goes on to say, older women come to Europe to look for Egyptian men, usually for sex but sometimes to marry (this is a known phenomenon). He says with a big smile, “men tourists want to jiggy-jiggy, you know what that means?” His wry smile, twinkling eye and He asked my age and made me guess his. I pegged 24, maybe even 22. He swore on Allah that we was 30, “but everyone thinks I’m younger because I’m small.” I’ve just realized though he may not be hitting on me (still on the fence about that one), he certainly is no stranger to prostitution. He insists with a knowing stare that 70% of tourists are looking for sex, (can you say “hooker damage?”) p.s. He’s not that cute. I decide to pretend he was hitting on me anyways, otherwise I’d have to admit I may be losing my traveler’s mojo. Perhaps I’m getting a little long-in-the-tooth or maybe I’m caving into to my lingering internalized homophobia or just simply I don’t want to politicize my travel, but on this trip, I’ve started telling everyone that I’m divorced. Over the years, in many countries, the locals respond with incredulous looks and comments when I tell them I’m single. By saying I’m divorced I’ve been able to sidestep most of the interrogation, sympathy, and distrust.

View of Luxor City from the outdoor cafe.

...on to eavesdropping and 'secret friends' for the final installment.