Before becoming a jaded Cairene expat, I was much more adventurous with the kinds of transport available to me in this sprawling metropolis. Besides government-owned public buses (some of which are even air conditioned) and the smaller versions called minibuses, a very reliable subway system exists in Cairo, as well as trams in some suburbs, and privately owned microbuses that carry about 15 people. Then there are the motorised rickshaws, an import from India, that are invisible in the major parts of Cairo since they are not legally permitted to travel outside the poor neighbourhoods they serve.
A city with several types of transport - hardly a topic of surprise. But of course this is Cairo. Actually getting on a bus is a feat in itself. A friend visiting from Canada once spent a half hour at a bus stop just to video how the bus wouldn't stop to let people off or on. Rolling at a slow speed, but nevertheless moving, you have to be ready to jump on the vehicle without complaint. Then there is bus culture. I once rode on a particularly crowded minibus and the only place left to sit was between the driver and passenger seat on a piece of metal covering the engine. I had to keep shifting to relieve my behind from the heat permeating through that piece of metal - but at least I was sitting.
After about half an hour of driving, a man squeezed through the doorway past three other men hanging from the entrance. He was carrying a sleeping child of about two years of age, which he proceeded to purposefully dump on my lap. I looked up in shock, but no one else seemed to find it weird that someone had just thrown their child on a stranger in a moving public vehicle. The father proceeded to rummage through his pockets for fare, and I held on to the lolling body of the baby as the bus rumbled forward. After he had paid his fare, the man continued through the crowded bus to find a seat - sans his child!
I felt like calling back at him, but the man just turned around and smiled thankfully as he sat down near the back. So for the next half hour of the ride, I carried a sweating child until I had to get off ... and passed him on to the nearest woman on the bus. No one batted an eye. This kind of assistance is expected on public transportation, I eventually found out. If you are a woman, you are expected to carry someone else's child. If you are seated, you offer to carry someone's briefcase or shopping bag. And if no one offers, you dump the child, bag or whatever on someone else's lap without asking.
My favourite buses, however, are the small white microbuses that whizz like bullets down the highways. Although conductors and drivers will scream destinations from windows or open doors, people have learnt hand signals to indicate which part of the city they want to go to. The pyramids area is denoted as a triangle made with your fingers; a neighbourhood called "The 7th" is denoted by an upside down peace sign, also the shape for the number seven in Arabic. Once I learned the signs to places I wanted to go, I'd get a seat on one of these buses, and just sit back enjoying the super-fast speed with my iPod turned up.
There was always a serious sense of accomplishment when I took a bus. It felt like I had really fitted into the city. They are difficult to get used to and to arrive at your destination sometimes requires real gumption. I wasn't so happy when the temperature would rise, accompanied inevitably with a growing awareness of people's natural perfumes, but for one pound fifty - just under Dh1 - to get across town, I always jumped off the bus with a big smile on my face.
The stories you hear about female passengers getting harassed and men picking fights with each other on the buses are all true, but I can only fondly remember the breeze through the door of a bus - which is always left open - and the co-operative mood of passengers that helps make an otherwise bumpy, and sometimes frightening, ride more enjoyable. Hadeel al Shalchi is a writer for the Associated Press, based in Cairo
