A baby named Khaled

A couple days ago, I decided to take my visiting friends to one of the large hotels downtown for drinks on the rooftop bar overlooking the Nile at sunset. The view is impressive and I was excited to share it with them, so I was thoroughly disappointed when we found out the bar was closed for a special event later that night. Sadly, we took the elevator back to the ground floor and hopped in a taxi to go elsewhere.

After only about a minute or two in the taxi, though, our driver's cellphone rang. He had a quick conversation in Arabic and then turned around to us with a huge grin on his face and shouted "Wife! Baby boy!" It didn't take much to realize that his wife had just had a baby boy. We asked a few questions and found out that this was his third child (but the first boy), that his wife was at Ain Shams Hospital (one of the hospitals we partner with for research studies) and that he would go to see her as soon as he dropped us off. We then asked what the baby's name would be and were shocked by his response:

"Name the baby!"

We assumed there had been a misunderstanding and quickly assured him that we were not trying to name his child. But he would have none of it.

"Name the baby!"

Suddenly I was panicked. Even though he was clearly in a great mood, I didn't think we shouldn't be the ones naming the baby.

"Name the baby!"

What if he didn't like the name we picked? Did he want an English name or an Arabic name?

"Name the baby! Mohamed, Ahmed, Mahmoud, Khaled..."

Thankfully he made it clear that he wanted an Arabic name. So I spoke up and suggested that the child's name be Khaled. My friends agreed that it was a good name and our taxi driver was thrilled. Immediately he was back on the phone, calling his wife and friends with more Arabic conversations from which I could only pick out small pieces. But those few pieces definitely included "Americans in the car" and "his name is Khaled".

We had actually named the baby.