To be a successful driver here in Egypt, you have to treat each encounter with another vehicle (or person) like a game of chicken that you are determined to win. If I were driving, I’d be frozen in one spot — afraid to move for fear of hitting someone. I would want to go and then second-guess myself and hesitate and in that instant the opening in the street would disappear. Successful drivers here are arrogant and self assured with the attitude of “no one’s going to hit me. Y’all better move out of my way cause I’m coming through and I’m not stopping!”
Riding with Josh is like listening in on a conversation between him and every other driver on the road: “Oh no, don’t even think about inching ahead of me buddy” or “Are you going? Never mind, I’ll just drive around you” or even “No, I’m not backing up. You back up.” Yes, that’s the conversation he had today. We were driving home down one of Maadi’s many narrow streets that although they are 2-way, are only wide enough for 1 car because there are cars parked on both sides of the street. We were 1/2 way down the block when another SUV turned onto the street and started driving toward us. She had room to pull over to let us pass and then misjudged how much room she had and ran into a curb. I guess that made her mad cause then she decided she wasn’t backing up. And Josh wasn’t backing up. There were 3 dudes in the street yelling at her to back up — because the way the cars were positioned, she was in a better position to make space for us to pass, but she refused.
She kept gesturing for Josh to back up, but he had thrown the car in park and wasn’t going anywhere. It was about a 5 minute standoff with cars starting to back up behind her when she finally caved and pulled part-way into a driveway so we could go around her and then we were back on our way. The entire time Josh stayed cool and casual and just kept shaking his head saying, “I’m not backing up.” If I had been driving, I probably would have caved and then would have proceeded to scrape the cars on both sides of the street all the way to the corner.
I never was good at chicken.