The Petrolem Blue Monkey

In the late eighties, my mother had a 1967 FIAT 1100. The FIAT 1100 is known in Egypt as "El Erda," meaning "the Monkey," due to it's ugliness.

Mom's Erda, a petroleum blue model, was very problematic. One day, as she was driving merrily along the streets of the upscale district of Zamalek, she hit what she believed was an open manhole. It is not clear whether she first realized that there were no manholes on this small side street that she knew very well, or whether she noticed her front driver's side wheel continue merrily on its way when the rest of the car had come to a grinding halt.

She loved that car, despite the fact that it was more often broken than not, and that there were no more new spare parts for it.

I used to take the car out, without her permission or knowledge. I learned to drive on that car, at a time when it had one working headlight, no brakes other than the emergency brake (which was so low that you could not reach it and see the street at the same time), no first gear, and no reverse. Yet, somehow, my friends and I contrived to park it is the exact same place we had taken it from. In Cairo this is no mean feat, even with a fully-functional automobile.

When my mother found out, and after she got over the initial anger [fury], she loved to tell the story about how I would "zoom around the narrow streets of Zamalek at breakneck speeds, narrowly avoiding falling into the Nile." She told my wife and daughter that story again and again.

If you knew my mother, you knew that every story she told was worth hearing again and again, for she put such style and emotion into telling her stories that the story itself, which was always very good, often paled in contrast with the sheer pathos she put into the telling of it.


A FIAT 1100 Erda, courtesy of Wikipedia.