We foreigners (or at least those of us with pale skin) must look like goofy, walking targets to some of the less scrupulous taxi drivers that patrol the streets of Amman. Although 95% of the taxi drivers I’ve come across during the last month have been perfectly law-abiding, the remainders take one look at my clothes and skin and assume that I must own at villa and at least two Ferraris.

Taxis here don’t follow street signs here – if you want to get to someplace out of the way, you have two choices. Either give the driver the name of a nearby, larger landmark that everyone knows about, or if you know exactly where the place is that you’re going from your own experience or a helpful guiding piece of paper that a resident friend/employer has given you (kind of them, really) and give the driver turn-by-turn directions.

The problem in my case is that taxi drivers seem to know a sucker when they see one, and they see a big tall goofy sucker when I wander up to their door and tentatively ask for “Dawaar Sadis?” – “Sixth Circle?” I thought that it would only be at the beginning of my stay here that I’d get the “Tourist’s Scenic Tour” as my mother dryly called it when I explained it to her: I try to get to Shemeisani and I’m driven in a big loop around my destination before being dropped off as the driver chats with me happily, with a big grin on his face.

Last night, on my way back from the school at 1 AM after working on the new server for twelve straight hours, I had my first rather nasty run in with one of the Taxi Sharks that I fished up outside of the school. Although my guidebooks explicitly say that rates do not increase, regardless of the time of night, apparently my tiredness prevented me from noticing immediately that the Shark hadn’t turned on the meter. I guestured to it and said, “minfud’luc” (probably proving further that I was just a dumb American who couldn’t speak his language) but he spoke rapidly, pointing to the clock, and told me that after midnight, it was a flat rate of 5 dinars. I sat upright at this. 5 dinars? The trip had always taken 1 dinar before, I protested, but I actually just felt worse because I only had a dinar and a half on me anyway: I’m a good sap; if someone is going to try to cheat my money away from me, I want to make sure he gets as much as possible!

That story doesn’t even compared to what happened tonight, the impetus for this entry. I had just made a new friend a few days ago through Silas at the school, a young Jordanian medical student named Haytham that had lived with him last year. I had a stroke of luck in meeting him, because Haytham turned out to have a lot of interest in computer construction, and he knew where all the best deals were in town for parts. I needed to get a new sound card for the server anyway, so I called him up this afternoon, and he offered to meet up with me at Mecca Mall on the other side of town. Easy enough for a brainy young man such as myself, especially one who was completely savvy to the possible wiles of Sharks after the previous night…right?

Wrong. Today’s Shark snapped me up just outside Philip’s house, grinning happily as he weaved through traffic. I was focused on texting Haytham and didn’t notice for thirty seconds that he hadn’t turned on the meter. I tried to ask about it, but he waved it off cheerfully. “No problem, no problem!” he chanted, baring his teeth and patting me on the knee. He asked me about my family and friends, whether I had a wife and children. I answered his questions as best as I could in a combination of English and bad Arabic, feeling more and more uncomfortable at the sight of the darkened meter and the fact that he seemed to be taking me far beyond where I believed Mecca Mall was. I asked him several more times to please, turn on this meter, but he gently refused each time. I finally just lapsed into silence, staring out the window.

Things started to get really awkward when he started patting my leg more frequently and jovially asked if I liked massages. “I give them, you know – second job at the hammam!” he proclaimed proudly. “Do you like sex?” he continued, rubbing my left shoulder as he steered slowly through the traffic. I laughed uneasily and asked how close we were to Mecca Mall. It turned out we were only a minute away from it, and I tried to figure out what I should pay this strange man.

I offered him a 5 JD note at first (I didn’t have any bills smaller than that) and I didn’t want to converse with him any more than I needed to. At the sight of the bill in my  hand, his eyes got wide, and he said, “Well…it is more.” I raised an eyebrow, and dug through my wallet to find another dinar to give him. He patted me on the shoulder, and said, “That ten will be fine there.” He handed me the five back, and gave me two single dinar bills back. I furrowed my eyebrows and said, “8 dinar taxi ride? Ghalli Iktheer, very expensive, isn’t that?” He grinned broadly, shrugged his shoulders and said, “It is Eid now,” as if that answered all the questions. At a loss for anything else to say, I got out of the cab and that was it.

Don’t be a dumb foreigner like me – I wish I had had more taxi experience back in the States so I would know what was typical and what wasn’t. Over the next few hours, I consulted with Haytham, Philip, and Ahmad and figured out the best way to deal with sort of Shark-ish behavior and how to not get cheated by taxis in Amman.

1. Be direct and insistent, immediately: say “Sheggela Andad, hulla” if they try to give you the “no problem, no problem” bit. “Turn on the meter, now” is more authoritative than just waving at the meter and saying please. “Sheggela Andad, o benzael” is what Haytham told me to say, “Turn on the meter, or I get out”
2. The law is on your side: any driver who tries to charge a fixed rate, or who doesn’t turn on their meter immediately, is in violation of Jordanian law. Threaten to write down the cab’s name (each registered cab has its own “name” which is written on the side of it) and the driver’s too, if he left out his registration card which has all his personal information. Usually, just the sight of you getting out a piece of a paper and a pen when they know they’ve done something wrong is enough to have them hurriedly wave you out of the car. Oftentimes, Silas has told me, that if you do this they won’t even ask for any money, just beg that you won’t tell the police on them.
3. Don’t pay them: if all else fails, Philip told me, just don’t pay them if they cheat you. Have a piece of paper written out in Arabic that says, “You violated the law and tried to cheat me by not turning the meter on, even though I asked you a dozen times to do so. Therefore, I am giving you ____ much money instead of what you’re asking for.” There’s not much they can do about this, and I like this one the best.

Hopefully I’ll never have to use these, but that would assume that I’ll never run into another Shark, and unfortunately, the time will come when I will. This time though, I’ll be ready though and I’ll make sure that whoever tries to take advantage of my nationality doesn’t get away with it.

Well, I’m exhausted. Almost 3 in the morning, and I still haven’t been able to get the audio working on this server yet. Gotta keep trying though. Getting hard to type coherantly, hope that this post is legible when I read it tomorrow.