Free People Like Us by Joris Luyendijk

because of the fear that they only say what the customer wants to hear. But in many Arab countries, drivers have day jobs as civil servants, so the taxi provides a safe place in which to have conversations with ordinary people. Some drivers were cagey, others more open: One said that policemen could “buy” busy crossroads for a hefty sum in order to issue fines, which went into their own pockets. A large share of the profits would go to a boss who’d subtract a sum, and so on, making a pyramid of parasites. Some drivers worked for customs, in taxation, in education, or in prisons, and the same pyramids seemed to exist everywhere. “I can’t help it,” drivers would say. “My salary is too small to live on.”
    My usual driver in Jordan told me that his brother had gone to Damascus in a brand-new Mercedes to spend a weekend with his family. The next morning, the car was gone. He reported the theft to the police, made the rest of his visits by taxi, but on the last day he saw his Mercedes with a new HUKUMA [government] number plate. The police station
tracked the number plate, and an hour later a general turned up. “Was that your car?” he asked brusquely. “We found arms and drugs in it, enough to lock you up forever.” The brother nodded, excused himself, and left.
    During a trip back to the Netherlands, a taxi driver who was originally from Egypt told me that a friendly-looking guy in a coffee house had accosted him during his last trip home: Wasn’t he bothered by the mess the country was in? Wasn’t it scandalous, all this waste and repression? Did the taxi driver live in Europe? That was a rich and civilized place—our idiot of a president could learn something there. The taxi driver was indeed bothered, terribly bothered, by the state of his homeland. He agreed, and aired a few further complaints, and then the friendly-looking man said, “Listen, you bastard, I’m with the secret police. I’ll let you off this time, but you’d better watch out. I know where to find you and your family.”
     
     
    O r take the story of “Walid.” I met him after the pope’s visit to Syria. This had produced a predictable article about the Holy Father’s travel itinerary, embellished with great quotes from the president and the most senior bishop in Syria on religious tolerance and world peace. I padded it out with human interest quotes from ordinary Syrian Christians, and we were ready to go. The piece made the front page, and colleagues back home sent their congratulations.
    Thanks, but it seemed I was learning much more about Syria from Walid. He’d been recommended to me by a tour leader I’d befriended. At first, he hadn’t wanted to talk because he’d had bad experiences with Western journalists. Walid was in his twenties, had a modern haircut and good clothes, and his father had lived in England for a while. We
had a beer together in the hotel bar, and strolled on to a night-club. What was it like to be a pro-Western young man living in Syria? He looked at me as if I was asking him whether Syria would ever win the World Cup. “It’s really boring. Boring, boring, boring. Every day you see the same slogans; you hear the same incendiary rubbish about Israel, while everyone knows that we’ll never be able to do anything for the Palestinians. Everybody’s cynical. They’re selling degrees for three hundred dollars a subject at the university. Professors force students to have sex with them in exchange for good grades. Sons of important fathers pass all their subjects without taking the exams. You’ve worked damn hard and he hasn’t. You get a nice grade but he gets a great grade, because his dad’s put in a call to the professor. Wouldn’t that drive you mad?”
    What did he feel when he saw a portrait of the president? “Nothing—disgust maybe. These people are destroying my country. They’re stealing oil money, demolishing monuments, polluting nature reserves, building up the coast. People who