“Cus ummak!” he screamed, finally giving in. Cus ummak is the one Arabic phrase known to every Israeli cabbie. It means “your mother’s cu*t.”(Page 138). All of theses harsh words were delivered to Horowitz while taking a cab ride in Israel. Not only do the cab drivers recklessly drive through the crowded streets, but they also try to cheat everyone out of their money. They hide their meters in the glove compartment, so that no one can see them and they can run the price up on you as much as they want. Horowitz was very aware of their scheming ways, and confronted his cab driver asking him to turn the meter on so he would not be cheated out of his money. Upon reaching his hotel the driver asked for ten shekels for the fare of the half mile they drove without the meter on and he yelled at Horowitz, who yelled back and won the argument causing for that dramatic outburst by the cab driver. I think this conflict with the cab driver shows how criminal, and unjust so many people in the Middle East are. I know it may sound and I will be criticized for generalizing all of the Middle East as I have before, but the sad part is that it is the harsh truth. Why are so many people in all of these countries in this area thief’s and crooks? Everywhere you turn you are getting scammed by someone. You cannot trust anyone, and why is that? If people think that one day this region of the world can get along with all of the others in the world I think we need to look again and see what these people do, and how many wrongs they do, and why they do them?
TH
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TH, I understand where you're coming from with this. It seems in all of Horwitz's stories there is some element of being scammed for extra money and taking advantage of horwitz just because he is a foreigner. But, as you said, I don't think everyone in these countries are crude, lying, thieves who just care about money. After all there are many of people in the US who try to scam people for their money and yell profanities in the street and that doesn’t mean everyone in our country does this. But I do think you have a point that from what we've read it seems like there society does have much more of this than ours. This could be because their living conditions are so much worse than ours are or maybe it is for some other reason that I am not aware of. - AB
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