in which i indulge in an occasional rant

As I sit at my desk this fine (read: hot and smoggy) August morning with a steaming mug of Nescafe (almost as good as machine coffee from McTrib!), I thought I would take this time to reflect on a Cairo phenomenon I have come to refer to as Guerilla Advertising.

I am pretty sure I have discussed the traffic problem here, namely how driving is terrifying due to the collective insanity of Egyptian drivers. No lanes are marked, so you have cars zooming madly and cutting each other off, everyone is honking like crazy, and there are no real stop signs or traffic lights (or if there are, they are ignored completely). Sometimes a police officer will step into a busy intersection to try and even out the traffic flow, but that's rare. If you want to cross the street as a pedestrian, you have to just make a mad dash between the cars and hope for the best. And by "the best," I mean hope that none of the cars speed up to try and hit you, which I swear has happened to me. Don't worry, they missed.

Egyptian officials are aware of the problems and recently passed stricter driving laws in Cairo, like outlawing children in the front seat and a penalty of 3 months in jail for not having a seat belt on. But I have yet to see a single car get pulled over for a driving infraction, or any police cars on the roads at all for that matter (just uniformed cops standing around by the embassies), so I have no idea how any of this will be enforced. (Answer: it probably won't be.)

In the downtown areas, like where I work in Mohandessin, sometimes teenage boys just stand in the middle of these extremely crowded roads filled with irate, weaving drivers, holding stacks of fliers and advertisements. As cars drive by with open windows (most windows are open as most cars lack air conditioning, and it is freaking hot), the boys fling the fliers in through the open windows. The first few times this happened, I was just looking out the window minding my own business when I got smacked in the face with a flier for a travel agency. I did not realize what hit me and had a little spazz-out, then figured that these boys must frequently aim for faces, probably because they are window-adjacent and make good targets.

Having attempted repeatedly (and without success) to dodge and/or otherwise avoid being bombarded with useless advertisements for Pizza Hut, computer stores, and other things I don't care about and/or can't translate, I decided on a new tactic: the Death Glare. So yesterday when I was in the cab home, I fixed my best "Don't Mess With Me" Death Glare on three Guerilla Advertisers near enough to my cab to throw something in. The first one averted his eyes and left me alone. Success! The next two did not seem bothered at all and chucked several useless fliers directly at my face. This is probably because I am not even remotely threatening, as there is no way that I am exiting my cab in the middle of 5-7 (depending on relative craziness of drivers) lanes of swerving, honking cars to do anything about it. There really is nothing I can do, except sit in the backseat and fume quietly. Luckily, I do that extremely well.

PS: To those who have asked, the title of my previous post "all the pretty girls go to the citadel" was supposed to be a pun on the title of the Spoon song "All the Pretty Girls Go to the City." Because city...citadel...yeah.