Size Does Matter
Profiling: it's not just for vaguely fascist airport rent-a-cops anymore. Shady Salah explains how important profiling can be when you're behind the wheel of a cab.
Words by Shady Salah
WHEN SOMEONE IS RACIST, people think it's just because he has an attitude problem, or he didn’t get enough love when he was a kid. But the truth is, some people just have bad experiences with a certain category of people.
In the taxi life I deal with a lot of types and races. One thing I've noticed is that when passengers are alone with me in the taxi, they act according to their real nature. Outside, a person may act differently, but when he is sitting in my cab, nobody can see or hear what’s going on between us. So people behave the way they like: they can be nice or they can be rude, but in either case, no one will find out what they did inside the cab.
This is the reason why lots of passengers take out their frustration in the taxi, either by telling me all about what bothers them in life, or just pissing me off by being rude, because they're unhappy people. When the person who pisses me off is a man, I can respond or even kick him out of my cab. The problem comes when it's a woman who is looking for trouble or looking for a man she can take out her anger on.
There is one type of women that I learned long ago to avoid picking up. Fat women. No matter what, I never stop for them because every time I have, I've regretted it immediately. The problem with fat women is that they feel that they're not attractive. Wherever they go, men don’t look at them twice. Most of the large women in this country never get married, and if they do, they don’t get the man of their dreams.
I feel sorry for them, but it’s their problem not mine. They see their friends and relatives getting married or having relationships, while they stay lonely. Then they get jealous, then depressed, and after a while they start hating men, because they don’t give them enough attention.
Some of these girls overcome the weight problem: they don’t care what people think about their looks, so they live their life as if they're beauty queens. They make their own charm by developing their personality and their sense of humor; they're fun and funny and everybody likes them, regardless of their size.
I wish I could say that all large women thought positively about how they should live their lives. Unfortunately, most of them can’t defeat the depression. They start hating both men and beautiful women. They become jealous of everything beautiful and look for pretty people to insult and humiliate in order to satisfy their ego. The best prey for these women are the poor kids who provide service, like in restaurants or shops. The big fat crazy woman goes in, asks for something, starts a fight with one of the employees, insults them and then after that she complains to the manager and leaves. Then she feels happy.
Taxis also provide a service, which makes taxi drivers targets as well. Fat single women step into a cab looking for trouble. They'll boss the taxi driver around and shout at him for no reason. The worst case I ever encountered was a few year ago, before I developed my "no fat women" rule.
This woman asked me to take her to Shmaisani. She was going to a coffee shop, but she couldn’t wait to get there to pick on someone, so she picked up on me. First she asked me to drive fast, but there was a traffic jam; I told her that the traffic is slow and that I can’t go any faster. I don't know what triggered it, but she started yelling at me!
“You want the ride to take for ever! You want to spend more time with me—you think that I’m a prostitute!!"
Huh? How did we go from "traffic jam" to "prostitute?" But she went on:
"I’m a journalist and I’m old enough to be your mother. You are just a filthy taxi driver, so shut the hell up and drive!”
She didn't need to tell me to shut up: I didn’t say a word! I was scared! I didn’t say or do anything wrong to that beast and she had no right to say what she said, but I had no choice but to keep my mouth shut and drive her to where she wanted. If a man started yelling things like that at me, I'd beat him up, but I can't do anything to a woman.
I had a few more similar experiences, until finally I learned my lesson. Now when a fat woman sticks her hand out to hail me—well, she can just keep waiting.
