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Her name is Nagat

Travels in Egypt

Annette
2005-08-29 18:53:02

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Her name is Nagat.

I first saw her outside Cairo's airport terminal.

A woman taxi driver - the only woman, for that matter,

among a thick throng of her male counterparts,

all busy shouting "Taxi! You want taxi?..."

Almost instantly, my searching eyes had picked her out in the crowd despite the fact that she was shorter than the men, and was easily crowded out by their competitive spirit. - Do you know what it is like to arrive in a strange city in the middle of the night? Whether it is Delhi, Bangkok or Cairo - you always arrive in the small hours of the night. Nobody, not even a ray of sunshine is here to greet you. You are travel weary - you may have crossed five time zones and sat in an excruciatingly poorly designed plane seat for the past twenty hours. You have just endured entry formalities and are headed outside, bag in hand. "Outside" takes on a slightly more sinister air when you travel alone, outside even your own culture. For a moment, you may experience a pang of envy for the fellow passengers who are being met by friends or family. You watch them embrace, smile, in the comfort of knowing exactly what to do and where to go from the moment they are earthbound again. Then you take a quick glance down over yourself, your luggage, and wonder if it is all here, if you are energetic enough to brace this. You know there are five, ten short steps left between the glass wall you will pass through momentarily and the new city beyond; five or ten seconds between the known and adventure. - At precisely that point, I always feel my heart beat faster. I hear myself voice a request to be guided to good and kind people. By then, my ten seconds are up and I am facing the throng of taxi drivers milling about in front of every airport the world over. Here in Cairo, the crowd is large and noisy. "Taxi!" "You want taxi?" I hear all round me. Dark heads and flashing black eyes try to catch mine. ...