DUBAI // A flirtatious taxi driver and a jealous husband were this week fined Dh1,000 each for fighting.
"Good evening honey," a 38-year-old Syrian driver, FM, was said to have told the man's Egyptian wife as she stood outside the family apartment in Al Nahda with her husband and child in December 2011.
Her husband, 31, an engineer from Egypt, told her to take the child and go back to their apartment, and a row between the two men began.
The husband asked the driver whether he had been drinking alcohol then threw his key chain at him. He then became upset when the taxi driver refused to give him the keys back, and when the driver swore at him the row became physical.
When the men appeared in court, they denied assault charges although each claimed they had been harmed by the other.
The husband said the driver hit him on his back and shoulder, while the taxi driver said the husband called a relative who banged his head on the wall and twisted one of his arms.
The driver claimed that he was merely asking the man's wife directions, but that the husband then insulted him in Arabic. "When I told him I was an Arab and asked why was he insulting me, he told me to get lost or he would step on me with his boots," said the taxi driver.
