Amman Taxicab Confessions Volume 3 - Laa nuhibb al-Urdun kathiiran

Hope you enjoyed the Maha reference in the title.  

No real funny stuff this time, but a retelling of a pair of kind of sad but interesting encounters with cabbies who didn't want to be in Jordan anymore.

Both rides took place on last Saturday evening (July 23) on my way to Sweifiyeh and from Swefiyeh to meet with Aziz, my language exchange partner.

1) On the way there, I spoke to a taxi driver that had lived in Sweden for six years, and then Cape Town in South Africa.  He has been living in Jordan for a few years now, but hates it.  I think he thinks Jordan is the sticks...

2) On the way from Sweifiyeh, the cabbie instructed me that he didn't want to speak Arabic to me.  Here is his reasoning why:

• He learned English by speaking to Indian people that he met while in Doha.
• When he spoke Arabic to them, he knew they wouldn't know much, so he Hindi-cized certain words so they'd understand.
• He didn't want to speak Hindi-cized Arabic to me, so he only spoke English throughout the ride.

While scratching my head in confusion, I listened to his story.  He had lived in Qatar for 35 years and was working at a pretty good job in Doha, Qatar, but due to a dispute between the Qatar and Jordan governments, Qatar began to impose a hefty monthly fee for Jordanian nationals who wished to continue working there.  Therefore, he was forced to move back to Amman.  For a year and a half, he refused to work because he didn't think the employers here treated their employees with respect.  He said that he got offered a $350/month job (which he said would cover only 1/3 or 1/2 of the living expenses for a small family), but that he refused it because the employer would ask him to do other people's work as well as his own.

So he's driving a cab...

All joking aside, a common complaint that I've heard here is the lack of decent economic opportunities.  Many people are underemployed, and some of the people that are employed don't seem to be working too hard.  For example, the many construction sites that I've seen with a lone worker just moving stuff around at a leisurely pace, or the lobby of Amideast's building, which remains full of shattered glass from what I presume was a renovation gone awry, or kaput.

Amman Taxicab Confessions - Episode 2

Here's a couple of short stories/observations:

• Yesterday, on the way to class, the cabbie dropped in to the service station for a fill-up.  This would NEVER fly in NYC.  

• My host mom, roommate and I paid a visit to the duty-free shop yesterday afternoon.  On the way there, the cabbie pulled up on the side of the road and an agitated woman and her daughter jumped into the cab, only to bail out about five blocks later in the middle of the road after flipping the cabbie a 1/4 dinar piece. That ruined the cabbie's mojo, as he then got confused as to how to get to the Sheraton.

• Cabbies in Amman HATE to break bills and give out change.  Chris tried to pay a two dinar fare with a five dinar bill, and the cabbie refused to take it.  When our host mom paid the cabbie who took us to the duty-free shop with a 10-spot, the cabbie exhaled in disgust.

Amman Taxicab Confessions - Episode 1

We ran into a real character of a cab driver on the way to class yesterday.  Here are some highlights from our conversation:

   1) He has two kids, who live with their mother, Antonia, an Italian-American, in Brooklyn.  Antonia had "short hair, like man". Antonia used to be a lesbian, but wanted kids.  He said he told her, "you want kids, I  give you kids".  And he did.

   2) At the time, Antonia had an African-American girlfriend named "Cookie".  Said cabbie, "I f****ed them both".

   3) He worked as a cabbie in NYC, but on the side he ran a cigarette smuggling operation.  How much money can you make from smuggling cigarettes into NYC?  He cleared $4,000/week and drove a Beemer. 

This is why people visiting him from Jordan would ask, "he's only been in America for four years - how this motherf***er get this stuff"?

   4) It sounded like his cigarette smuggling operation got shut down by the authorities.

   5) He once lost $40K gambling at Mohegan Sun.

   6) While living in NYC, he didn't dress like he does in Jordan.  Instead, he dressed all blinged out, including gold chains, etc.  Said cabbie, "I look like n****r".

   7) He wants to go back to the US, but not to NYC.  Instead, he wants to go to the Southern US, where "women believe anything you say".