Naming Children

On Tuesday I took a cab home from work. Nothing special there, just another day driving down the Corniche. About 10 minutes into the ride though, the driver got a phone call. All of a sudden his face lit up and he was clearly elated about something. Through his broken English and my poor Arabic, he gets across that his wife just gave birth to his first son. (His first 2 children were girls and he's been hoping for a son.) Now that he has a son, the baby factory is done. Khalas!  I told him congratulations then he asks me, what he should name his new son.

Excuse me? (There is no way I'm picking the name for this guy's kid.)

But he insists! I tell him it's an important decision and he should choose. The cab driver pushes back and insists that I choose the name because he's so happy he can't think straight. I suggested his name, (no way), maybe his father's name? (No way, same problem.) How about mom's father's name. (That's absurd.) So he rattles off a few Egyptian names and I picked one at semi-random. (Ibrahim. Why not?) He likes it and rolls with it!

A few minutes later apparently his father-in-law calls and he informs him of his choice of names. It sounds like the Father-in-law wants to know where he got the name from, because he turns and asks me what my name is. Apparently it goes well because he keeps insisting on Ibrahim. A few minutes after that, his wife calls (mind you, she just finished a c-section) and he informs her of the son's name and where it came from. After all this, he looks at me and says, "That it! She agreed to it! Ibrahim it is!"

I said congrats, paid him a healthy tip and got dropped off a little farther from home than I would have liked to help him get on his way to his wife. How cool is that? I named some guys kid!
......
or did I?
....
So I told this story to a co-worker the next day and he tells me that a few guys we had in from the U.S. last week had a similar experience just last week.  Hrm.. ok, I'm getting suspicious, but maybe people time childbirth for Ramadan?  I did find it a little odd that when I offered to get another cab so he could go to the hospital he was ok with taking me all the way home.

So the next night, I got into another cab and wouldn't you know it, this taxi driver just had twins while we were driving down the road! Amazing!

Nice try buddy, but here's the normal fare.