We climbed into the cab and told the cabbie we wanted to go to the bowling alley at Zayed Sports City. (Yes. More good times in Abu Dhabi.)

The driver said he didn’t know where that was … and not only that … that this was his first day as a driver … and not only that, that we were his first customers.

And we were nearly his last.

We see lots of new taxi drivers in this city. They must cycle through fairly quickly. I can hardly go two weeks without a driver saying “I am new; please tell me how to go.”

But first fare? That was new.

As was the harrowing events that followed.

Our guy, fresh in from Pakistan, he said, seemed to speak a bit of English, but actually he barely did. And that caused problems right off.

We needed to head the opposite direction on Airport Road. We finally got through to him the concept that he needed to make a U turn.

To be fair, the intersection we were at is tricky. Airport Road goes over 19th Street via a bridge. We were down below, where it is possible to make a left or right onto 19th.

To make a left, however, a driver needs to go through the first light and make a turn at the second. The first light is for traffic heading east only … the second is for traffic heading west only.

Our New Guy from Pakistan, got up to the first light — and pulled a rapid left. He was driving into one-way traffic. Yeah.

Luckily, as he went under the bridge at some speed, the cars heading the opposite direction were stopped at a red light (though at least one flashed his lights at him) … and luckier still, cars making a left to go under the bridge can’t really see a car going, say, the wrong way on that street, and very possibly would have driven into us at some speed … but they also were stuck at a red.

Meantime, as we got over the shock of turning into a one-way street, we were sputtering all sorts of orders. “No. No! Not here! One way!” He just kept driving. I then started giving him “Left! Left!” because wrong way or not, the ramp leading back up the Airport Road was on his left. And it was the only way out of the intersection that didn’t involve even more wrong-way driving.

Been a long time since I was going the wrong way on a three-lane road. Like, it may never have happened.

We got up to Airport Road, and I think only then did New Guy realize he had been driving the wrong way. He rapped his head with his knuckles, a sort of “how could I be so lame” thing.

We in the backseat just sort of swallowed hard and reflected for a moment on how we could have been (no exaggeration) killed by this way-too-green cabbie.

So, turns out our new driver also can’t hold a lane very well … and changes lanes none-too-safely … and has serious trouble with basic English commands. (“After signal, first right,” etc.)

The bowling alley at Zayed Sports City, which is best known for a 48,000-capacity stadium, has several signs directing a person to the bowling center. The signs are in both English and Arabic. But the Pakistani guy clearly cannot read in either language, because we had to blurt more basic instructions to him … well, also, he could have just followed the arrows.

He seemed unclear about the concept of driving us up to the entrance of the bowling alley, too. Like, we were going to get out in the middle of a huge parking lot?

I am not optimistic about his future as an Abu Dhabi cab driver. We gave him a tip of about one-third of the total fare, when we got out … because we felt bad for him or hoped he could send some money home before he was killed in some grinding wreck … or maybe because we felt like arriving at the bowling alley alive was worth some sort of tip to the guy who almost saw to it that we didn’t.