You Can't Make Mistakes.

Well, look at the sign, for starters.

I am often asked for directions. I am told that this is because “[I] look like [I] know where I am going”—I did an impromptu survey last week when asked where something was.

Now, as most of you know, I am a foreigner in Egypt. I should not know where I am. The streets are named things like “Mohie el-Din Abou el-Ezz” and Gameat al-Dowal al-Arabia,” and so forth, and they go off every which way, with no rhyme or reason. But, I am armed with a very useful tool: a map. Not just one map, a bunch of maps. I have loads of them. I buy every map I see in hopes that they will afford me a more complete picture of how the city is laid out.

This has caused me several problems.

First, before acquiring the maps, I navigated the city like everyone else: blind. Now, I actually feel obliged to answer when someone else asks me “How do I get to such-and-such place/street?” or the more common shouted demand from cabbies: “Fayn haaga? [Where is something?]” This holds doubly true, because not only do I know where stuff is usually, but I also know how to say where it is as well.

I don’t get to play ignorant that much anymore.

Second, when I am in a cab or driving with someone else, and they take us the terrifically long way, I am inclined to make a suggestion that we could/should/should have/could have gone a different way as well, and possibly saved ourselves some time—in some cases an hour. This is met with either: confusion, denial, indignation, ridicule, or—the worst—offense. It isn’t that I always know where I am or where I am going, either. But, I do almost always know what I am near, and how to get there. I’m just trying to help. Most of the time now, I just keep my mouth shut and see how things unfold.

It’s a neat skill to have in a city like this, but nearly useless unless you want to always want to be telling people where to go or pissing people off.

Other than the endless hours memorizing maps, I also often know where I am because there is a sign. Now, this is not the case everywhere, of course. There are parts of the city that have no signs. There are parts of Boolaq, very near to where I live, where the streets only have impromptu names because they are either too new, or no one has cared to name them yet.

But, in the vast majority of places where I am asked for directions, there tends to be a sign standing somewhere nearby indicating the information requested. The Metro is fantastic for exhibiting this phenomenon.

Inevitably, when you are descending the escalators in the Metro stations, someone will ask which way one or the other of the trains are. There are huge signs with this information in two languages all over the place. No one reads them, they just ask instead. Once on the train it is the same deal. There are line-route maps indicating the name and position of every stop in on that particular line above every door. Instead of looking to these for information, it is more customary to turn to the guy next to you and ask, then he will likely look at the sign, and relate his findings.

I know that much of this phenomenon has to do with relatively rampant illiteracy or partial literacy, but I can’t imagine that this is the only explanation. There must be more involved as well. It seems almost as though no one is sure of themselves to a high enough to degree to be happy with their choices as well. Maybe it is just a social thing—being sociable via feigned ignorance. Lord knows that American kids do that all the time, fearing perception as a nerd, geek, or know-it-all on account of knowing or understanding something. It’s probably all of the above. I don’t really care what behind it. It just cracks me up when someone looks at me and at the sign past me and asks, “Where am I?”