Posts Tagged 'public transportation'

• Taxi Drivers Who Won’t Follow Through

Hypothetically, if I was having a perfectly normal conversation over coffee with someone, and the perfectly natural hypothetical question, “If you could choose one group of people to wipe out with a genocide, what would it be?” came up, the first group I would choose would be taxi drivers.

I have had my issues with taxi drivers in Cairo before.

But what the fuck is this thing where they don’t take you all the way to the destination you want because it’s out of their way?

When the fuck did Earth become a planet where I should give a shit about a taxi driver’s destination? That’s like an umbrella asking me to shield it from the rain so it doesn’t get wet while it shields me from the rain.

This week, I’ve had two separate taxi drivers drive me a partial distance in the direction of my destination, and then wait until I’m an inconvenient walk away from it to say that they won’t take a certain turn because they are headed to some other area that makes my stop out of the way for them. Because they would have to make a U-turn if they dropped me off AT THE PLACE I WAS PAYING TO GO. As if they’re giving me a lift as a personal favor.

Also this week, a third taxi driver left me on the side of the road well before my destination and I had to walk the rest of the way because he suddenly decided he didn’t have enough gas in his car. Not that I believe that he didn’t have enough to get me there, but IT’S HIS FUCKING JOB TO HAVE GAS. Committing to a journey that you can’t make just so you can profit off the portion of the journey you are willing to make is douchebaggery of the highest caliber.

I can’t wait until Cairo becomes a more cycle and genocide-friendly town.

• The Crying Bitch-faced Mama’s Boy Who Sexually Harassed Me in Egypt

Sexual harassment exists everywhere, but it is particularly rampant in Egypt. It is both tolerated and perpetrated by the authorities, as well as the average everyday assholes of all ages that you encounter all over the country. If you have boobies and you walk around in public in Egypt, you should be prepared to guard them from boys as young as 5 and as old as 85.

Nature’s bastard trick on women, though, is that if we are protecting our boobies, we have an ass on the other side that is out there for the taking, yet we lack the eight extra arms that we need to cover everything when some cunt-waffle is squeezing past us to cop a feel.

Today, Egyptian bloggers are writing about sexual harassment in Egypt. Many people in Egypt are silent about this issue, act like it doesn’t exist, or blame the woman for dressing too provocatively, bringing the harassment onto herself. If you follow the “#endSH” hashtag on Twitter today, you will see from other women’s stories that it doesn’t matter if you are covered from head to toe–no woman in Egypt is immune to sexual harassment.

Men are often excused for this behavior because it is written off as being in their nature as men.

I have more sexual harassment in Egypt stories (as well as sexual harassment not in Egypt stories) than someone who looks like me should, but I am hoping to use today to do a bit of a social experiment that I have fantasized about since a day in 2008 when this son of a bitch on a microbus felt me up (against my will, which should go without saying, but for some reason I still have to say it).

This particular incident was not my first time, nor my last time, nor my worst time, being sexually harassed in Egypt. But I will write about this story because I happen to have a photo of the perpetrator. He looks like this:

I know the guy smizing in the back really captures one’s attention with his GQ pose, but the guy I am talking about in this story is actually the one in the foreground who is wearing sunglasses. Click to enlarge and memorize his features.

So, I was on this bus with a friend of mine headed from Cairo to Alexandria to meet up with some friends for a day of fun. I was sitting in the aisle seat. I popped in my earbuds and nodded in and out of sleep during the bus journey.

I felt something like movement that I thought was beneath my seat over and over, and I kept shifting and looking around to see what it was. Every time I checked, I found nothing.

It happened again, and I looked behind me. Guys were sitting back there, but nothing was happening. I looked below me. Nothing.

Was the guy behind me kicking me from underneath the seat? It stopped again and I thought, he should stop kicking my seat or whatever it is he’s doing.

This went on for a while, and it wasn’t until I felt air from the outside world entering the lower back/top ass part of my clothing–parts of my body that I thought were covered–that I figured out the trick that I was previously unable to figure out.

I swiftly turned around and looked at my chair, and found that there was a crack of space between the back of the chair and the seat where the guy behind me had been sticking his fingers and moving my jeans down to feel up my ass. I saw his hands move back quickly and he continued his nonchalant air of having no idea what is going on.

I screamed a string of insults at him in Arabic, mostly about the gulf-like wideness of of his mom’s vagina from excess of activity with random men she meets in buses. That guy in the background of the photo looked really confused about what was going on when he watched me take off my shoe, sit up on my knees in my chair to face the guy straight on and hit him across the face over and over until his nose started bleeding. My friend stood by, muscles tensed, looking on guard as if he would jump in if the guy tried to do anything to me. Finally, I stood up and went to where he was sitting and smashed my other still-shoed foot into his balls. I did it a second time in case I had missed the first time. He coughed and his face turned red and he began gasping for air and crying. I spat in his face and then sat back down and tried to calm myself down. It was scary, but I felt great.

Just kidding, LOLZ! 

That is what I did in my head after I replayed the incident in my head 56 billion times. What I actually did in real life was whisper something incoherent to my friend about how the guy behind me was making me uncomfortable, switch seats with him, and then cower and try to gather my thoughts about what to do without crying.

The guy started trying to take my photo with his mobile phone. My friend turned around in his seat and stuck his own camera in the guy’s face and took the photo that you see here as retaliation.

My friend and I really did follow the guy off the bus when he got off. He got off somewhere on the highway before Alexandria, near a dirt road that went into a small village. By then I had managed to explain to my friend in a still less-than-coherent manner that the guy was sexually harassing me, though I didn’t really explain how.

Our plan after following the guy off the bus was to beat the shit out of him. That didn’t happen, mainly because it just became really confusing after that.

The guy was stone cold calm, and acted like he had no idea what I was talking about when I told him I saw his hands. He said that he was married and asked rhetorically why he would ever do such a thing. My friend got in his face and scared him, but he tried to act friendly and invite us to tea as if we had a wrong idea about him.

He was really quite decent, and I think he was trying to make me question the reality of whether what had happened actually happened. Maybe it was all in my head.

I have no doubt that it happened and that he’s the kind of guy that has probably had sexy times with his sister. But I was also so dumbfounded and lost for words and flustered, I really had no idea how to outwardly react. Especially when I expected a heated argument and got this docile conversation. I couldn’t get him worked up, or to even react.

I had this rage toward men and boys like this that I carried with me from all my previous experiences with sexual harassment in Egypt, and I wanted to take it all out on this guy. And he fucking deserved it.

But I realized that I’m just a puny girl and I’ve never actually picked a physical fight before. I didn’t know how to initiate it, especially since we were just standing around on a dirt road trying to discuss how to redress sexual harassment.

He asked me, “What do you want?” And I was really startled because it was such a good question, coming from such a barnacle of a person.

In my head, I thought of a few things. I want revenge. I want you to feel as shitty as you have made me feel, but I can’t because you’re shameless. I want to castrate you. I want your balls to hurt. I want you to never do this to anyone again. I want everyone like you to never do this to anyone again. And then I realized, it’s pointless. What am I going to do, ask him for a promise to change? Punch him in the face? I don’t know.

My friend really scared him, he was quite shaken up and he had asked a random passerby on the street to get involved. The passerby had no idea what happened and he was trying to calm me down because he was under the impression that the guy had verbally offended me somehow. He tried to tell me that it’s just words, that the guy didn’t mean it, and look, he’s being apologetic. He escorted the guy to a bus which went into the village, and when he was safely inside, he faced us and gave us the finger.

It is rare to have a chance to face someone who has sexually harassed you because most sexual harassers in Egypt are huge cowards and run off. This guy was a coward because he pretended like he didn’t do anything, but most of the time we women don’t get to have a chat afterwards. I guess you can see what I would have done differently if I had the chance, but it’s also quite different when you’re put on the spot.

Anyway, for shits and giggles I asked my friend to send me the photo he took when he stuck his camera in the guy’s face. I have always wanted to use it for some kind of revenge, but I really didn’t know how.

Now that today is the day Egyptians have chosen to collectively address the issue of sexual harassment, I give you his photo and ask you to spread it to everyone you know. The Internet really does shrink the world, and most of my “six degrees of separation” experiments have actually ended in connections after about two or three degrees.

So if any of you have seen this guy, you have my blessing to do to him what I did in my head when I thought about it later.

And if you are this guy, I have an answer to your question now.

• Feudalism on the London Underground

It wasn’t enough that on their website, Transport for London emphasized how low-class I am by needlessly showing me all the upper echelons of the higher classes to which I don’t belong.

They also have this poster around the Underground Tube stations that is supposed to be a warning not to steal from them by jumping the train without paying:

"Plain clothes inspectors operate across our network. Get caught fare evading and risk a fine of up to £1000 and a criminal record."

Apparently we, the common riff raff who use London public transport, all look alike to Transport for London.

I guess if you look at us long enough, with our unwashed Oyster cards and our sheep-like queues for the escalators, we peasants, serfs and villeins are unremarkably homogeneous.

For those of us who can’t afford the Internet or are too uneducated to know how to use computers and may not have access to the list of titles Transport for London reminds us exist, but do not pertain to us, we have these posters telling us, “Since none of you faceless drudges are unique enough to be distinguishable from one another, watch out because any one of you could be a ticket inspector.”

It’s important to instill fear and mistrust among the proletariat so they don’t organize and revolt.

• Titles on the London Underground

I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, but…

…I’m not actually a member of The Nobility.

I know it comes as quite a shock. But I am just one of the common people. I’m one of you. Cook my own meals. Wipe my own ass.

So, when I travel around London to do work that doesn’t pay, I’m usually not doing it in one of these fucking things:


I just, ya know, take the bus or the Tube.

So, I’m not sure why the Transport for London website assumes that people who, when they travel, travel in one of those fucking things, would pay any heed to their silly hot, oppressive little “transport system.”

This is why I was nonplussed that when I went to their website to complain that they ripped me off £10, which actually means something in my meager existence, I was required to include my title as a part of my identification.

And that the titles available were not just Ms., Mrs., Miss, Mister, but rather:

Come. Fucking. On. How many fucking Viscountesses do you see taking the fucking Tube? If they’re not getting around in one of these,


or some sort of convoy of armoured vehicles, then they are at least going to use a vehicle with tinted windows and a chauffeur, or a friend’s car, or a taxi, or fucking anything besides the fucking London public transport system.

Transport for London, I get it. I am poor. I am classless. I was a bastard child whose family’s bloodline has no concept of its own historical worth because it is worthless. I have done nothing with my life to earn the title of Dame or Duchess or Squadron Leader.

But without people like me, where would you be, huh? Huh? Huh?

*Photos from Monsters and Critics, screenshot from Transport for London.

• Warm Seat on the London Underground

Today I sat on a seat in the Tube, and it was decidedly warm. Smelled ripe.

Welp. Pretty certain I sat in someone’s farts and contracted ass cancer.

*Photo from Going Underground’s Blog

• The Bastard Who, While He Admittedly Walks With a Cane, Sat Next to Me in a Priority Seat on the Bus

After weeks of loathing South London and all of its godforsaken boroughs of hell, I was just starting to admire central London as we approached a lovely view of the Houses of Parliament.

Then this old sonofabitch who smelled like booze, has long hair and a long beard and long fingernails, and basically looks like a hobo, ruined my moment by parking his crusty ass right next to me. I mean, maybe he’s just a hip old guy who thinks it’s cool to look like that and plays a lot of classical guitar. But nonetheless, why do people do this? Why do people get all cozy up on you when there are empty seats everywhere? I even had to move my bag, which I was using to occupy the empty seat next to mine to illustrate to the bus that I do not like strangers cozying up to me in my space.

Yes, he walks with a cane. Yes, I was sitting in a priority seat for disabled people. Yes, I am not disabled.

But you know what? Let me get one thing straight here: There was an empty priority seat in front of me, closer to the door, and another two empty priority seats behind me. I don’t care if he walks with a stupid cane. If he really “needs” a priority seat, there were three other options besides the one in my space.

I wouldn’t have even minded it if he got all territorial and told me to get up so he could sit down because I am selfish and lazy and not disabled. If he had given me a chance, I would have gotten up and sat in some other seat outside of the priority area altogether, and then everybody would win.

He completely ruined my bus ride.

*Photos from The People’s Forum and Mama Pop.

• The Three Taxi Drivers I Had the Misfortune of Encountering this Morning

I did not actually ride with the first one as he refused to drive Downtown because “it only makes 17LE on the meter.” The advantage of this situation for me is that his own stupidity, which he will have to live with for the rest of his life, is punishment enough for what happened right there.

The second one deliberately chose the slow lanes of traffic while a road was backed up from an accident, probably to make the price on the meter go up. Being stuck in traffic caused me to miss the work bus I was trying to catch at 7:20. At some point he noted that “it is only 7:00,” as if to imply that there is still time and it will be okay. He did not yet actually know that I was catching a bus at 7:20 until after he made this statement, so I really don’t know what “it is only 7:00” was supposed to mean. But I could have strangled him and no one would have known.

Third guy was to take me from Downtown to my work since the work bus was long gone by that time. He didn’t like the fact that we were going somewhere far away, yet he agreed to drive there. He kept asking “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” and then when we were almost there, he pulled the taxi over on the side of the road so that he could walk off into the desert somewhere and take a piss. I work far away from Downtown, but I don’t work that far away from Downtown. It’s a commute, it’s not a road trip across the country with no rest stops. He also took a really long piss. An abnormally long piss. A piss so long I considered suggesting to him that he have his prostate checked for “complications.” When he was finished, he strolled back to the taxi with a we-have-all-day gait. When he re-entered the taxi, my eyes became microscopes and I was suddenly able to see bacteria crawling all over the seats and the gear shift and the doorknobs and his money.  Then he mumbled about how difficult and exhausting this odyssey was, which, you know, I was really able to sympathize with when I have made this back-and-forth journey approximately 350 times and he had to do so once and get overpaid for it. The guy has a point, after all, what with the lack of toilets along the way past megamalls, chain restaurants, gas stations, coffee shops, residential areas and hotels, today’s intolerable 24°C/75°F Cairo weather, the clamor of passengers dozing in the backseat, and their unrealistic demands of arriving at the destination to which he agreed to go.


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The worst thing about plagiarism is how good I am at revenge.


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