wazis, taxis

I've explained before how weird things are here with taxis. But, a refresher in case you forgot...

Gold taxis are old taxis, and they are driven by people new to UAE. That is to say, crazy indian and pakistanis. They never know where anything is, and they don't speak english.

There are silver taxis, more expensive (color coding probably designed by the same idiot who put red before orange on the airport safety scale). The drivers, though they also don't know where anything is, speak moderately bad english and usually try to carry on a conversation, which is, most times, painful.

New taxis are available for ladies only, and they are called purple taxis, though the interior is more like lilac. They are driven by women, and usually the safest.

I always seem to end up with a gold taxi. The taxi drivers then proceed to drive me around to rack up the fare, and won't listen to my directions or look at my map. It's been frustrating dealing with that.

So today, I was standing outside the intercon at 730. The patio in front of the hotel is black marble, and was radiating heat. It was already over 100 degrees and humid. A half hour went by and I'd almost decided to take an intercon sedan (which is three times the price of a taxi) when a gold taxi pulled up.

My driver was a crazy guy with bad english. He wouldn't listen to my directions and kept trying to take me the wrong way. Normally I just give in but this morning I had to get to work. I ended up having to use my marine words on him. Blanking those out, the conversation went something like this:

me: Please....stop trying to....go the wrong way and....listen to...what I'm....saying before I...lose my mind.
driver: hurhefhor keblah blah kobloblablabla ec hallah hon haralla blah blech blah blah
me: I'm...late for work...so JUST DRIVE STRAIGHT or I will.................!
driver: en haffa blah blah (I'm not sure, but I think he was cursing me)

Later, as we were nearing my building, I decided to go for some positive reinforcement so I thanked him for listening to my directions. He told me he was from Waziristan, possibly the most lawless place in the world. He was having visa problems, and hiding in his cab. He asked me "do you like taliban?" and I felt he was baiting me so I said "Actually, I am taliban (the nickname, at work, has stuck)". Weirdly, he turned around to look at me, almost sending us into a palm tree.

"You taliban?" he asked. "Only when I am at work" I admitted. He suddenly grinned at me like he had finally gotten my joke.

I gave him a big tip because it sounded like he needed it. And as we were pulling up to my office he was pointing towards the other side of the street saying something that sounded like "sha sa san". It was only when I got to the door of the office that I realized he was pointing out the sand to me.

Yeah, I haven't seen any of that before.