Returning to the hotel that evening, I packed up in preparation to go on a four-day package tour to Aswan and Luxor in the south of Egypt. Two other guys from the hotel, Brazilian engineering students on holiday from school in France, were to take the same tour. Rafael and Marcelo.
We were met by a taxi driver who was due to take us to the train station. He was in a mighty hurry, we knew not why. In a contraption that looked fit to ferry two in marginal discomfort, he forced the three of us into the back seat. The front seat lay empty, mocking us. As we stared at our knees in front of our noses, we made muffled conversation.
Our maniac driver suddenly stopped after having driven for fifteen minutes including a grand finale of driving in reverse for fifty metres the wrong way up a one-way street. Realisation dawned upon us: he was picking up someone else.
I looked back. Hold on. Two people?!
Miraculously, the little car had a big heart. We didn't bother with introductions. Saeed the driver kept performing acrobatic one-handed feats of driving with scant disregard for potential collisions. He punctuated the shocked silence with "Very good! Very good driver!" Nervous, helpless laughter from the rest of us.
Rafael had told me that he would be in India in February. When he commented now about Cairo's lack of traffic rules, I told him that Bombay would offer up the same medley of chaos and cacophony but with ten times as much traffic and a hundred times as many pedestrians. He was floored. I told him to get out of the city as soon as he landed.
Saeed dropped us off at the station, stuffing a ticket in each of our hands, and told us that someone would meet us at Aswan the next morning.
"Who?"
"Oh, don't worry, no problem. Some guy will call out Marcelo's name."
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