Pimped Taxi
This taxi is pimped. You can tell from the outside even. For one thing, the wide banner at the top of the windshield says Mercedes in big white-on-black letters. It actually is a Mercedes too, complete with monogrammed mud-flaps, and the classic tristar ornament. Silver hubcaps, even. Doesn’t matter that it must be 20 years old, and that it’s the same color as the desert dust, that dull yellow brown. All the taxis here are that color. Of course, all the taxis are ancient Mercedes too, but this one is still special. It is, as I said, pimped.
Not all the taxis have maroon curtains over the windows, for one thing. They’re cheap fabric, but they still shimmer admirably in the afternoon sunlight, suspended from a pair of plastic cords that run the length of the interior. It’s a custom job, all right. The inside of this taxi doesn’t look like the inside of the other shitboxes in town. No, this is a truly stylish shitbox. The seats have been reupholstered in a blue-grey-brown diamond tartan which looks surprisingly not like a rug. Strangely classy, actually. All the headrests on the seats are in the same fabric. It’s the attention to detail that tells you, really. A lesser cabby wouldn’t have bothered to match the headrests. Of course, when he’s carrying the usual complement of six people – four in the back, two in front – there aren’t enough headrests to go around and they’re all in the wrong place. But still. The little things.
Like the stickers below the vent controls. The driver’s installed a row of little mouth-and-tongue stickers in fluorescent colors, like the logo on the cover of that Rolling Stones album. He’s got bling too, a tangle of engraved silver pendants hanging from the rearview. They look like the Berber jewelry that’s sold in all the shops here. There’s also a strange charm made out of red, yellow, and green yarn and shaped like a bell, and necklace of turquoise plastic beads. Hmm. Not my style, a little too chintz for my tastes, but hey, I’m sure it’s totally money here. I’m more about the dash. The dash, baby, is covered by a custom-trimmed piece of thick black faux-fur. Nice. But the best touch is the stained-glass decals on the little triangular side windows. Not actual stained glass – that would be rather expensive, I imagine – but broad stained glass decals placed over the glass, a pattern of yellow and green diamonds. Lends a real ambiance to the interior, I have to admit. Goes well with the curtains.
Of course, not everything is swank. It is a heap running the circuit between a small rural village and an even smaller one 30km away, after all. In the desert. So it’s covered in dust. Pretty clean really, you know he takes good care of it, but there’s still a permanent patina of tan on the floorboards and the upholstery throws off clouds of dust if you hit it. And stuff’s broken. The steering wheel’s been repaired with electrical tape. The rear door handles have been replaced by loops of fan belt, bolted into the cracking plastic. The door handles must go first, come to think of it, since all the taxis round here seem to have replacements of one sort or another. Bits of the interior trim are missing as well, holes in the plastic covered with brown packing tape. But – get this – the vehicle has bass. No shit, there’s a shiny silver CD player in the dash, and the rear speakers are massaging out some opulent string-and-drum thing. Traditional Moroccan music, to be sure, which normally gets pretty repetitive, and is normally blared out through some horribly tinny little tabletop radio. This man, however, has taste in tunes. He’s kicking back in the cab with two of his taxi-driver friends, waiting for his six passengers, listening to his music, drinking tea off a silver platter. Pimped, I told you.
