Excerpted: My Thievery of the People

“The Beauty of Disaster”

I was on a long stretch of the highway heading back to the city on a clear day in September. Rounding the Sphinx airport, I could see the planes descend one after another, and thought of 9/11. One of the most astonishing acts of revenge on one of the most beautiful days of the month. September is made up of thirty beautiful days, each one as potentially catastrophic as the next. And here, beyond the cloak of pollution that hovers permanently over Cairo, the clarity was mesmerizing.

I don’t drive very fast. Driving at or below the speed limit gives you a perspective into other people’s desperate habits. It was the clearest day in September, and a car was weaving in and around the traffic behind me. It barely advanced relative to the vehicles around it, and remained visible in my rear-view mirror thanks to its animal headlights and glistening bright green paint. I sucked in my breath and braced for impact as it came up behind me. By some miracle it wove around and settled in front—but a minute later, the weaving resumed. This time the Mercedes (I could see that now) attempted to squeeze into a narrow opening between two taxi vans farther ahead.

Idiot, I thought. What an idiot.

I was used to Mercedes drivers and their BMW counterparts going twice the speed limit on this highway, risking everyone’s life and the occasional donkey. No question of tickets or citations, baksheesh and wasta would take care of that. I had no such privilege. Like 95 percent of the country, I swallowed “the bitter pill of wealth disparity” and drank from “vials of colonial poison” and cowered under the “the punishments of infidels.” My cousin used to say all that—in English. It was especially on the most sanguine day of September, when the planes rose vertically into the sapphire sky, that I could fathom what he did.

I relaxed again into my interminable drive on this interminable highway. The airport was newly built, a regional hub in the Western Desert that mostly carried tourists to Aswan and Alexandria or businessmen to and from the Gulf. In other words, people you did not want to get into an accident with. But the Mercedes, not as far in front as I had assumed, came back into view. It made a quick lurch to pass a taxi van on the inside. Paid upfront by his cargo of tourists, there would be no reason for the taxi’s chauffeur to go any faster than this leisurely pace. The Mercedes might have made it, but its wheels skidded on a seam on the side of the road, the sun’s reflection vibrating on its hood like a strobe light. It began to fishtail.

Ya allah, I murmured and took my foot off the accelerator. The Mercedes spun around to face me, then spun around several times more, coming to a screeching stop by the side of the road, pointing in the wrong direction. By then my car pulled over and had stopped as well, I stopped it I suppose. Our front bumpers were almost touching.