Cairo Part One: Drive like an Egyptian

When it comes to world history, there are few places more mysterious than Egypt. How were the Pyramids built and why? Was Tutankhamun murdered or was it natural causes? And is there anyone left who remembers the road rules in Cairo? There are road rules in Cairo, I'm certain of it, just as there are nice neat lines painted on the roads. Unfortunately no-one is really paying much attention to either. (For the record, I suspect that the government once received a shipment of road paint by mistake and thought they should do something with it, hence the lines.)
Driving in Cairo makes you realise how much, as a traveller, you have to simply let go, hand your well being over to a man in an un-roadworthy car who has one hand on the wheel and the other firmly planted on the horn. I'm talking of course about taxi drivers.
To be a taxi driver in Cairo you need three basic things. The first of these is a car, and the only prerequisite for the car is to be black and white. Seat belts, doors that close, headlights at night, these things are all optional, to be utilised as the drivers see fit. There is talk that some people would like to see Cairo turned into an open air museum and the taxi drivers are obviously right behind this scheme, in some cases driving around in cars that are so old that the brand names are written in Hieroglyphics.
The second thing you need to be a taxi driver in Cairo is the ability to look death in the face on a daily basis. To stare into the cold endless eyes of doom, then swerve around him at high speed, honking your horn as you go. Either that, or stop and pick him up and see if you can't overcharge him for a short trip, death might be a tourist, you never know.
The third, and most important thing, you need as a taxi driver in Cairo is a fully functioning horn. Without this you might as well ship the car off to the museum and take up a life selling souvenirs at the Pyramids. I actually saw a taxi driver sitting forlornly by the side of the road on my travels, his car bonnet up, waiting for assistance. There was no actual mechanical problems, it was simply that his horn had stopped working.
Despite this, taxis are the simplest and cheapest way to get around Cairo. Or so they say. This is true up to the point where you actually have to get in one, make your destination known, survive the trip then get out and either a) argue about the fare or b), and I quote, 'Simply hand over five pounds and walk away, don't get into any arguments or discussions' (the taxis had meters, but they were never used). Most of the time we tried for option b, which meant sitting nervously in the taxi throughout the entire trip, holding a wad of bills clenched in our sweaty fists, whilst trying to also hold onto something immovable, our bags and our sanity. On arrival at our destination we would bundle out and the designated payer would thrust the sweaty bills through the window, mutter Shukran (excuse the misspelling) and scurry away. Simple.
Of course the taxi drivers, like any enterprising businessman, would try to get as much money out of us as possible, which often meant a whole trip arguing about the fare, with us threatening to get out before we would arrive and pay him less than he had been arguing for but more than the trip was worth. This worked for all parties because he was ultimately happy to get a few extra pounds and we were ultimately alive.
The other thing about taxi drivers, and this is a world wide phenomenon, is that they like to move at a fairly rapid rate of knots. A high turnover means more chance that the next fare will be some American tourist straight off the boat who wants to see the Pyramids (or the Statue of Liberty, The Eiffel Tower etc). Cairo, as a whole, is one big mass of movement that never stops and is certainly never silent. Despite this however, and the very best efforts of the men in the black and white museum pieces, the average speed of a car in Cairo now is a paltry 14kmh. Needless to say that everyone, not just the taxi drivers, is involved in a city-wide push to bring this average up, speeding wherever it is possible to do so.
In all this traffic, this maelstrom of honking and speeding, overtaking and organised chaos, pedestrians and animals, I never saw one accident the whole time. Sure nearly every car had multiple dents, so much so that when I saw someone with a new car, especially an expensive car, I felt sorry for them and their shiny unblemished duco. In the end though, there is method to this madness and everyone gets along just fine, as long as you realise that too close is never too close and being able to shake hands with the man in the next car at 14kmh is perfectly reasonable.