Taxi Cab Diaries

Yes, it’s true. President Bush was in town last week. I did not write a story about him. I did not see him. I did not worry about a terrorist attack. Per Bush’s visit, an American colleague of mine said, “If I could ask Bush one question, I’d ask him why he’s meeting the Iraqi Prime Minister in Amman.” Moral of the story: If it were a dangerous place to be, Bush wouldn’t come here.

The President’s arrival did give my cab driver (and me) fits Wednesday night. The first problem, though, was that my driver didn’t know where Hashmi Janoubi (the hill I live on) is. “Wain Hashmi Janoubi?,” Where is Hashmi Janoubi?, he said after I was already in and we were on our way.
I don’t know; you’re the cab driver!

I have been living here for ten weeks and this was only the second time I’ve had a taxi driver who didn’t know how to find Hashmi Janoubi. It was an infuriating question, as I learned only the night before - the first time in ten weeks that a cab driver didn’t know how to find Hashmi Janoubi. Tuesday night, I simply repeated Hashmi Janoubi over and over with increasing irritation while the cowed driver drove through an area I’ve never visited. When he found the highway, I was able to direct us from there.

Wednesday night, the night Bush arrived, the police had partially blocked the street we wanted to turn down. So we circled and circled the traffic circle, trying to cram into the bottle neck with about a bizzilion other cars. Then we tried a different route. It soon became clear that the driver didn’t really know where he was going. We were at an intersection where he wanted to turn right and I wanted to turn left when I lost my temper. He spoke not a lick of English. Which is fine. But, as I know a little Arabic AND I know where I live, I GET TO BE IN CHARGE!

So, ahem, we were at the intersection, and I told him to turn left. He started firing Arabic at me, and all I understood was "Hashmi Shimali.” A Lesson: Shimali means north, Janoubi means south. Hashmi is just the name of the hills (It's related to Hashemite, as in the "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan," and it refers to Hashem, great-grandfather of Mohammad.) We were in the general vicinity, and, because part of my host family lives in Shimali and I was there every day during Ramadan, I know how to get home from there. The driver was trying to tell me that left was Shimali, not Janoubi, which I already knew. He clearly didn’t know where Janoubi was, though, and I wasn’t going to ride around all night.

He turned left at the intersection, but he wasn’t happy about it. We came to the next light where I told him yemeen, right, and he couldn’t just turn and be quiet. He started his whole “This is Hashmi-Shimali routine again. I cut him off and repeated myself: yemeen. He turned. He started again with the non-stop Arabic, everything unintelligible except the extraordinarily annoying: “Hashmi Shimali mish Hashmi Janoubi” - Hashmi Shimali, not Hashmi Janoubi - every few words. I ignored him and said dogradi, dogradi, dogradi - straight, straight, straight. He tried to turn right at the end of the road, and I said: STRAIGHT! He started in again with his barrage, which I understood to mean: “Straight takes you downtown, not to Hashmi Janoubi.” I said, “DOGRADI! This is the way I know how to get there!” This was me losing it. Up to that point I had managed to stick to the few Arabic words that I know.

We went straight and within 30 seconds we were on Hashmi Janoubi, and I could barely conceal my disgust. When I paid him THREE dinar for what is usually a two dinar cab ride, I could tell he was embarrassed. He gave me half a dinar back.

Well. That’s never happened before either.