NOUR, the Light of Women’s Futures

Yasmine Altawdy
Jul 27, 2017 · 15 min read

“The synchronicity of interviewing a female ambassador followed by riding in a taxi driven by a female put me in a state of verbal diarrhea.”

Sometimes the Universe arranges events much better than any Hollywood script writer ever could.

That was how I met Nour Gaber, 47, the female taxi driver. I had just finished interviewing Her Excellency Ambassador Charlotta Sparre of Sweden, and I was hailing a cab to get back home and lo and behold, a white cab stops for me and I have to be frank, at first I thought it was one of those people who make extra money by using their private cars and unofficially moonlighting as taxi drivers — but no, this was a licensed taxi driver with the sign clear and protruding on top of the vehicle.

I’m not going to lie and say I was nonchalant about it — on the contrary, the synchronicity of interviewing a female ambassador followed by riding in a taxi driven by a female, put me in a state of verbal diarrhea — excuse the description but there’s no better label for the state I was in.

We talked and I took her contact information and set up a date for her interview which was exactly what I needed as I had to order the myriad questions popping into my head that I wanted to ask Nour.

Fast forward and Nour and I sat in a cafe with her smoking her Shisha and me my cigarette, as if old friends catching up. First off, I must say, Nour’s smiling and shinning face is so warm and welcoming that she put me at ease instead of the other way around. She’s a delightful conversationalist and human being, as you’ll discover soon.

Naturally, the first question was why are you driving a taxi for a living Nour, out of all professions? I confess, I was still “high” from the synchronicity of the events that led me to this interview that could be described as nothing less than Divine intervention.

Nour was born in Gamaliya then moved with her family to Imbaba where she still resides. She has six sisters and two brothers and graduated from Cairo University with a degree in Agriculture.

Nour started driving taxis in 2009 but before that she lived quite a lush life in a big house with her husband and twin boy and girl in Dubai for 15 years.

Here, the story takes on a cliché aspect: She was her husband’s guarantor for a bank loan to start a business. Next, she received a phone call informing her that her husband left the country, leaving her, their children and a huge debt she needed to repay to the bank.

Nour said her husband was difficult to deal with as he was narcissistic and a “user.” He also isolated her from her support system network of friends so she wouldn’t get any ideas to rebel against his treatment of her, insisting she don the niqab (full face veil).

It took Nour some time to recover from the shock, after 15 years of marriage and children; one could have hardly seen that coming.

So, after the shock and the tears, breakdown and depression, Nour — whose original name is Nadia but everyone calls her by her son’s name, Nour — picked herself up, dusted off the negative history and events and repaid her husband’s debt to the bank, a sum of 150,000 Dirhams, which she didn’t even see a cent of.

She applied for divorce papers and separated from her husband, returned to Cairo, sold her Mercedes and after living in an extravagant villa in Dubai, moved in with her family in Imbaba. At her mother’s insistence and encouragement, Nour resolved to work to support herself and her two children. The children were now enrolled in public schools after they were in International schools in Dubai, and they had to adapt to a new reality in Cairo, which was not easy.

At first, Nour opened a takeaway sandwich outlet which failed due to the poor caliber of employees, in addition to harassment by the municipality, as they told her she needed a license to operate. Inexperienced yet undaunted, Nour then closed the food outlet and opened a cafe in Al Haram street with a partner. It was successful for some time, with birthday parties and many customers, then her partner started mishandling expenses and when it came time to renew the rent contract, they could not afford it due to her partner’s mishandling of funds.

Still, Nour persisted. She decided to sell her Fiat 128. Through that process she discovered there was a post called a commission merchant who sells your car and takes a percentage. So the commission merchant sold it to a high-ranking connected officer but he foiled the transaction and the total she received was insubstantial,therefore again, she was cheated.

After licking her wounds, she picked herself up another time and decided to trade in cars; in essence she became the commission merchant after learning the ropes at car lots and dealerships in Tenth of Ramadan City, the Cairo-Alexandria road, Benha and Tanta.

Nour learnt how to check on a car to know whether or not it’s in good condition and what it needs and persisted until she became a skilled trader. It was then that Nour took a step back and checked her emotional well-being, living with the hurt of betrayal had hardened her soul, and she could no longer feel any compassion towards men in general.

So as a commission merchant, she’d ask the car lot owner for a car and his asking price may be 500 LE so she’d pay that and he’d “sell” her a customer. From here I’ll give the microphone over to Nour: “I worked and we both benefited. After I while I took stock of my wellbeing again and realized I was being unduly aggressive with the men I was working with since they weren’t to blame for my misfortune. I am a friendly person by nature, so my changed “charged” attitude drove the auto dealers crazy, as I fought, shouted and screamed at any dealer that upset me. I knew I was right and all my documents were in order therefore I didn’t care and I pitied no one.

And so life went on, and I’d check on my children’s needs after my daily morning shower before going to work where I’d wash the car and tidy it up in order to sell it at the car lot. I went to Alexandria, Benha, anywhere where there was business and I’d sometimes spend six to eight hours driving. Once I sealed one or two transactions I’d take the new car I bought back home. The next step was working in a car dealership. I’d developed a reputation of being straightforward and fair in the market and that I was a person of my word.

Dealing in cars is quite difficult and I faced many issues especially with documentation and I was cheated by certain dealers and dealerships, but I gained tremendous experience dealing in that market with my long flowing abaya (long flowing usually black complete body cover dress-like piece of clothing)with people either exclaiming or giving a look that said “What or Who is this woman?” By that time I became an old hand at the job and started paying more attention to my children’s needs.

One thing that took me by surprise was my daughter’s inability to enter the military institute not because of any lacking requirements from her side but owing to the fact that I got them used to me doing everything for them. So, one day, I took my daughter along with me to the bank and told her to go inside and pay the bank, then the rent and then I familiarized her with the streets and so on.

Back at the dealership, there was a taxi that had gotten into an accident and it was for sale at a very good price, and the dealership owner said to me, “What’s this? You’re buying a taxi? What are you going to do with it?” The process works like this: let’s say I have 20,000 LE, this 20,000 is work money. With this money I’d get a nice car at the car lots and fix it up for one or two thousand and my profit would also be in that range. So he said to me, “Use the taxi money to maintain your household and settle down a little but don’t take on a partner –do it on your own.”

Eventually I paid the full price of the taxi in installments and started looking for a cab driver and used the percentage from his earnings to pay the remaining installments but when it was time to take the taxi back — it was a wreck. At that time the drivers I dealt with all murmured “she doesn’t understand” to one another under their breath and when I figured things out, the minute one of them upset me, it was simply “Get out.” I stopped making compromises. I realized that whatever they can do I can do too. So I took the taxi and turned in the black and white taxi and received the white one with a five-year installment plan.

I had learned how to maintain it, tidy it up, wash it and fuel it up then drive it to the driver’s home whose typical response was “No, I’m too tired and lazy.” And it went on like that until I realized I will not be able to pay the installments so after my blood boiled, I drove the taxi myself first in Imbaba where the man’s attitude towards women’s work was “If my wife earned 10 pounds I wouldn’t be able to control her.” This is the reason why many women stay in unhealthy, unhappy and abusive marriages — lack of economic means. I remember a case during the revolution one day as we were recording cases we went to Fayoum to find that a man threw his wife off of the balcony. Thankfully she lived but with many broken bones and after her hospital treatment her parents told her you’re coming with us and her reply was “No, I’m going back to my husband’s house.” Shocking right? I’ll tell you why: her children. They will be lost without her and at her parent’s she would not have food to eat. She has no employable skills, so this all adds to the oppression.

Another really important issue is women who are the primary breadwinners whether they’re divorced or widowed with no help whatsoever from any government organization. Sometimes the husband is still alive but spends his days smoking drugs at the coffee shop with his friends and takes all the money she earns which she uses to support her children, her family as well as her husband!

Women who work as maids in homes must pass by their husbands at the coffee shop before going home to give them their daily wages, with the man eventually marrying two or three women who all end up supporting him financially and the woman’s reward is a night of sex with her husband.

“No way! That’s prostitution!” in disbelief. Nour laughed then continued:

So, back to the story, when I started driving the cab, I actually met some very good and nice people. I met you. “Thank you and I’m the one who is luckier to have met you Nour, you’re currently my heroine. You fell down so many times but never gave up and kept trying until you made it. I really admire you!”

“You’re too kind” said Nour modestly.

“Through my taxi driving, I started meeting extremely interesting women and during our rides — instead of male harassment – they’d engage me in conversations about the existing tensions between countries for example, or one time as I drove an economic advisor to his lecture venue I’d know and understand everything he was going to lecture about. This is priceless education for me. What’s more, I became the secretary for organizations like NADIM and Nazra and I managed other International organizations’ work in Egypt, through being their mode of transportation and contact person. Let’s say they’re going to a protest, I make sure I’m at the closest point to them in case they need to flee immediately.

Other stories include women imprisoned because they were indebted to banks when trying to marry off their daughters, or they were hash dealers and after they get out of prison they usually want an opportunity to start a new life but police harassment really impedes them anytime there’s trouble they’re always picked up because they already have a record.

It’s not just that. After prison, the woman is rejected by society, by her family and can’t earn a living. It’s very tough. She may be forced to go back to the illegal activity she was imprisoned for again. So the women’s organizations that I work with take her on as a case study with a file and everything and they’d prepare a kiosk for her with permits and all for no money whatsoever. This is the rehabilitative duty of society and governmental organizations that they’re sorely lacking in. I’m friends with the Nazra office manager and I drive her everywhere to a conference for example or a workshop and through my association with these rights groups, something in me started developing but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it until an Indian woman called Bonan with Amnesty International told me one day, “Nour, we want to set up a business project for you where you would teach women how to become taxi drivers.”

I can tell you horror stories about how women are abused– even murdered — because they’re dependent and illiterate –unemployable basically. We used to drive at all hours of day or night with Nadim Center to rescue girls from violent abuse from her family, husband, extended family. We see many cases like that unfortunately. You know in several Gulf countries, when a woman separates from her husband she gets a monthly income from the government to live off. That’s what Egypt needs to do. So anyway, back to the women taxi drivers project, it not only teaches women how to drive, it teaches them English so they can communicate with foreigners and they develop their characters through increasing their self-confidence so if she’s driving and someone starts yelling at her she doesn’t just cower and hide but replies and if need be shouts back. He can yell and she can yell. That’s that.” Nour is in need of an investor to help fulfill her plan to give women courses in taxi-driving, including driving technique, customer service, mental strength, car maintenance and English lessons.

“I want to create a school to spare other women the difficulties I faced and for society to accept women working in a ‘male’ profession, and could even be better than them at it.”

Nour thinks her project will benefit the economy through increasing household incomes by encouraging more women into work in a country where only 23.7% of women work, according to the latest UN figures, compared with 74.3% of men.

But there’s more to the project than meets the eye.

“I want women to shake off the oppression imposed upon them by men,” she says. “Women at home are ignorant of the outside world; however through going out into the streets and working in taxis, they’ll gain more knowledge, understand mechanics, the roads, and discover a wider world through exchanges with other people. So after developing a database, each driver has a set of regular clients whom she drives around. Other times, I get a call for a driver and I use my GPS to see which driver is closer to the customer and I assign her to the task. The percentage I receive from the women taxi drivers I spend on their training, so it’s a non-profit project basically geared towards development. So after writing the project papers, Bonam told me there’s a Swiss company called Droussoss and they said, “We’re going to help fund the place, staff, cars, the whole project.”

The logistics of the funds and involvement of NGOs like Nazra became difficult after the law that was passed prohibiting organizations from receiving foreign grants or they’d face lifetime in prison.

“So at that point everything stopped, not just me, but all NGOs in civil society were paralyzed. Three quarters of the employees left the country and a quarter are in jail. Half of them shut down and the others are working with what they have and if they’re funded they know they’ll be severely audited. So, once politics entered into the equation, it took us off target completely. Our goal was development and creating job opportunities for women.

I was disheartened for a while but after a writer published a story about me in the Guardian refugees approached me and said they’d help out if I take some refugees on and I became excited due to this positive step.

But I decided to take another approach. I’m going to buy another car, and will get a driver to drive the taxi and I will start teaching driving, not taxi driving, just how to drive in general until I find among the women I teach ones who can drive taxis. I want to empower other women basically and this new NGO law has stopped all possible work in civil society. It’s taken us twenty steps backwards. I don’t think it was a very well studied decision. It was taken to appease a certain segment of the population but it ended up defragmenting organizations that were in place to help those who endured state torture and needed rehabilitation and such. Of course, officially, the state does not torture anyone, you see?

I changed the mentality of my Imbaba neighborhood. I’d be sitting at the coffee shop with the men sipping my tea on my own and at first you’d hear the occasional grunt or complaint, but after weeks and months of the same routine, we now play backgammon together and discuss work problems and they realized I’m serious about what I’m doing.

At first my son had issues with his mother being a taxi driver in this patriarchal society we live in, but when he saw how the foreigners dealt with me, the respect and prestige of the position became apparent to him, and sometimes when he’d take a taxi he’d chat with the driver saying we have a taxi too and when the taxi driver finds out that I’m the one driving the taxi, he’d tell my son ”Your mother is worth a hundred men, your mother is a champion, you look after her!”

But my ultimate goal is still to empower other women, both financially and emotionally so she doesn’t accept that her husband hits her for example. When I appeared on a show on a famous Egyptian TV station, they also featured a woman butcher and a woman plumber, so really women can learn skills that are currently only taught to men, and they can contribute economically to the country as well as increase their standard of living and take better care of their families. I mean, this is all we want at the end of the day, a chance to prove that we can be just as useful and productive individuals in society.

Another thing is these NGOs and civil society organizations not only widened my horizons where now my clients ask Nazra about me or tell Nadim center what does Nour need from abroad or how is Nour doing? They’ve also become like family, they get me things for my children and when I got depressed because the project stopped I got diabetes and high blood pressure because I was crying myself to sleep every night, so they provided me with medication for up to three months in advance and they took me on holidays to Ras Sedr or anywhere else to cheer me up. It’s a really genuine heart-centered way of working and dealing with people and this is a huge, huge loss. There are terrible things going on in society that need to be addressed I mean there is incest, sex between a brother and a sister or children who watch their parents having sex because they’re 10 individuals piled up in one room and the bathroom has no ceiling or door.

I’ve seen some terrible things.

But I don’t want to end on a sad note. Let me tell you about this one time I had my cars parked in front of a building where the traders would come to view and buy the cars. So one time, a woman from her apartment balcony shouted down to me, “Hey, who are all those people? Don’t I get anything out of it? So I asked her if she wants to buy a car or a job to earn an income and her response was, ”No, a man dear, a man.” She’s married but everybody in the neighborhood knows she does that since her husband, as she described him, is “useless.”

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