on cairo streets, dust collects in huge piles. fine brown/gray filth.
you can stand on these little piles, making footprints, smoking cigarettes.
ive spent my time doing this.
watching the people go by.

the exception is downtown, and the richer areas.
these areas are kept clean.
ive spent my time here too, watching the people go by. the tourists and the hustlers, the beggars with various swellings. the ultra rich, the covered girls who smile at you, the men in dirty galabeyyas .

you can do this, you can smoke, standing on dust.

i smoke while im waiting for the microbuses. they seem to pick people up at dustpiles only. tiny 1.4 liter engines pull japanese aluminium boxes designed to carry groceries and little japanese children through tight japanese streets -- yet here they carry up to 12 people assed up on one another. the assing up isnt bad, and they play egyptian pop music at volume 10 for your enjoyment. its hard to say no - music and a ride is a great deal for 50 piasters (8 cents). thrill too, mind you

the buses scream through the city, constantly thousands in dented white at every possible direction - etch-a-sketch trajectories - uneven speeds - in the background everywhere - loading and unloading women in robes, thick middle aged workers, small families, occasionally some with chickens and rabbits. to stop one, you wave and scream your destination at it as it is going by. it will then either continue onwards, or stop suddenly, veering off to the side. a man will scream something at you about hurrying the fuck up, and then you scream your destination back at him. get in.

the felt of the seats is long gone, but that is far less worrisome than the long gone breakpads, the seething twitching dust covered driver (these men work incredibly hard and for long hours just to turn a small profit) repeating a sunna from the Koran ad infinitum and watching the ground go by through the floor.

the microbuses are the chief reason cairo has the highest road-death average in the entire world - 52 times that of the US. when one of these goes down, the result, in the words of Robert Young Pelton is "a lot like putting a couple of mice in a coffee can full up nails and broken glass, then shaking it really hard."

another factor might be the fact that..

.. .

noone drives with headlights on here.
at night.
yeah.. . thats what i said - noone uses the headlights on their cars.
yeah.. . everyone is driving around all night with no headlights.
in the. ..dark.

the common perception [sic] here is that:

1. headlights use up the battery. (again - why doesnt Mubarak have some kind of national headight awareness day?)
2. its really rude to shine that light in someone elses eyes.

funny, yeah -
and confusing -
people driving around in the dark,
colliding with one another
operating on dubious information
its a good parable
of some type
i think


--


"y'allah, y'allah!"(lets go, lets go)
the man was holding his head, screaming at the driver. blood trickled through his fingers, which were shaking.
"yanni - y'allah!"
they left in another microbus.

the bus sat on the side of the road, in the dust, scraped all along its left side. people were standing around, some screaming at eachother, some silent, some dazed, one on the ground moaning, some whispering. someone had left their bag of groceries in the bus.

i looked down at the dust, at the tiny trail of blood left by the man in the front seat whose head cracked the window. he was the only one bleeding - because of the glass which probably a cheap replacement).

apparently it wasnt that bad.

the wind kicked up for a second, and the little red clots dissappeared as the gray silt shifted.
the street was drinking.

i wonder if people report seeing ghost microbuses, filled with dead people, rusty and hot, trailing smoke. maybe only the beggars see them.

i read that in saudi arabia there were recently rumors among the young.. of women with goat legs dancing in the alleys of Riyadh, singing and dancing and committing other such sins, trying to succor in the weak of faith, presumably into the hands of the devil.

i shut my eyes and try to imagine the sound of a collision
the wind kicked up again.