Kris Kenway in Cairo

If it’s possible to drown in traffic, then Cairo is underwater. I sit in one of the city’s 60,000 cabs, a rattling old black and white Lada which has already broken down once on our journey from Heliopolis in the east of the capital to Zamalek, which sits on an island bordered by the Nile. At the intersection just before my flat, the taxi gives up for a second time. I look at the driver, but we don’t need words -- cars are already backing up behind us and Cairo doesn’t need another traffic jam. We both instinctively leap out and start pushing the vehicle. Two men standing nearby come to help us, then two kids appear and try to sell us strawberries, oblivious to the emergency. Together, we somehow navigate a six-lane intersection in free-wheel mode like urban bob-sleigh runners.
_____When we have enough speed, we jump back in the car and it faithfully fires up. As we turn the corner, something on the bumper of the vehicle in front of us catches my eye. Cairo taxi drivers only need two inches of separation from any other vehicle on the road, and I’m soon close enough to make out a bumper sticker: a simple, single line drawing of a fish. It’s the Christian fish symbol, made popular in America and apparently now residing in Egypt.
_____The next morning on my way to work, I wait to cross the street as the traffic police do their usual job of trying to make sense of the catalytic converter-free mayhem. I spot what looks like another fish on the back of a parked car, but this one doesn’t have the smooth outline of the Christian symbol. When I walk a little closer I realise that it’s not a fish at all, but a shark, complete with ‘No God but Allah’ written in Arabic inside its body.
_____Bumper stickers are nothing new in Cairo, rear windows often sport racing car numbers or heavy metal-style flames spelling out something incomprehensible along the lines of ‘Hell on wheels’. Cairenes live on the road, and when at least a third of everybody’s day is spent in a traffic jam, perhaps it’s not surprising when a four-wheel culture emerges. But this appears to be shaping up into a Fish vs Shark bumper-sticker war.
_____The New Testament is littered with references to fish, and Christians in first century Rome used the fish symbol to distinguish friend from enemy. So if the shark is a response, does it have any religious significance?
_____Hadia Mostafa is an Egyptian journalist who has been watching this sticker craze grip Cairo. "The shark was chosen simply because it is more powerful than the fish," she says. "In nature the shark eats the fish, dominates the fish. But the shark of course has no particular symbolism in Islam. Mainstream Muslim clerics are actually very saddened by the stickers which they feel are just another misrepresentation of Islam as an aggressive and violent religion with zero tolerance of other faiths."
_____This may be a worrying indicator for where Egyptian society is heading. Christians in majority Muslim Cairo have traditionally kept a low profile, but are now increasingly trying to distinguish themselves from their Muslim counterparts. As in Lebanon, Egyptian Christians are now favouring clearly Christian or Western names for their children, rather than the more traditional names, which could be of either religion. And as crosses become larger, so do the veils. The number of women wearing the hejab is far higher than a decade or two ago. Perhaps it was inevitable that this Holier Than Thou competition should find its way onto the bumpers of the city’s cars. "I do think the stickers represent latent tensions and these tensions are relatively new to Egyptian society," Mostafa says. "Members of both religions now appear obsessed with external displays of religiosity."
_____While France takes the controversial step to ban crosses and veils in schools, there is no public discussion in Egypt about its own problem with religious symbols. (There is a government ban on bumper stickers, but it is roundly ignored.) It is difficult to imagine that religious tensions in Cairo could escalate to the proportions of 1980s Beirut, but Mostafa remains cautious. "Now it appears that the fad is fading out a bit," she says. "But that's not to say that the tensions have subsided."
_____The next day, stuck in a traffic jam as usual, I find myself scrutinising the rear bumpers around me and I wonder whether my taxi driver is sporting a fish or a
shark that is, at this very moment, annoying the driver behind us. Just as the traffic clears up ahead, our engine cuts out and we roll to a stop. I look at the driver for a split second. Then we jump out and start pushing.

Kris Kenway is a screenwriter and the author of the novels Bliss Street, set in Beirut, and Too Small for Basketball. (click to purchase). He lives in England.

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