Lord Halifax, who was the viceroy of India in the late 1920s, was one day on a train from London to Bath. He was sitting in the same compartment with two elderly women who did not utter a word throughout the whole journey. When the train went into a tunnel just before the final station, Halifax made the sound of a kiss. And when the train came out of the tunnel and arrived at the station, he asked the ladies: “Which one of you kissed me?” and left them astonished.
That story was modified in America to tell of a young man who was on a train with a Frenchman, an old lady and a beautiful young woman. When the train went into a dark tunnel, the sounds of a kiss and a slap on the face were heard. And when the train came out of the tunnel, the Frenchman’s cheek was red.
Here, the old lady said to herself: “What a respectable young woman. She slapped the Frenchman on the face for trying to kiss her.”
The Frenchman said to himself: “This American bugger kissed the young woman and I got slapped on the face.”
The young woman said to herself: “How come the Frenchman kissed the old lady and not me?”
And the American smiled and said to himself: “What a smart guy I am. I kissed my own hand and slapped the bloody Frenchman on the face.”
A train has a special place in the Egyptian culture. We sometimes use the word metaphorically, like when we say the “Train of Life,” meaning the journey of our life. We don’t say the “Taxi of Life” or the “Airplane of Life.” It’s the train of life, for the metaphor of life going in one direction on rails is appealing to us Egyptians.
Actually, there are no trains of life in developing countries. There are trains that take lives.
The “Train of Progress” is a fast train. Yet it is not impossible for us to catch it or at least climb on its roof or ride it without a ticket or anything else for that matter, just to be on it by any means.
Any primitive country can buy technology. But without the culture of technology, the mobile phone will become a means for verbal harassment and the Internet a source of pornography.
Like on the train of progress, we are passengers of civilization, each of us in his own private realm.
My experience with trains is not vast, but I was on one heading to Alexandria on a rainy day. Looking out of the window, I saw a man and a woman bidding farewell. The woman boarded the train without taking her eyes off of him. Then she sat next to me and kept gazing at him standing on the platform while the train started to move. She did not notice me except when the conductor came and asked to see her ticket.
Then she asked me if she could read my newspaper, which encouraged me to start a conversation with her. She was reluctant in the beginning, but by the time we reached the city of Tanta, we were laughing and we even exchanged phone numbers.
Before I got off the train, I asked her who was the man of the warm farewell. “Nobody,” she said. “He was sitting next to me on the other train before I changed to this one.”
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
