Egypt's revolution has made life tougher still for Cairo's 80,000 taxi drivers, struggling to make a living on the city's chaotic, congested and potholed streets, says the author who has written a best-selling book about them. Khaled AlKhamissi's novel Taxi, first published in 2006, has been translated into 10 languages. It features 58 fictional monologues with taxi drivers recreated from his own experience. A new post-revolution English edition has just been published. Despite the optimism that swept Egypt after president Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February, AlKhamissi said taxi drivers, and the rest of the country's poor, have in fact suffered more since then. My taxi drivers are among the 55 % of the population living under the poverty line of $2 a day, said AlKhamissi. Those 55 % were not on the streets during the revolution and are without a real voice now. They are wise, they are watching, they are analyzing, but they are not acting. He added: Life has changed for them in the wrong direction. It's worse for them because we have no security and living on the streets without security is dangerous. There is less tourism and more chaos on the streets. AlKhamissi said it was too early to tell if life was improving for the middle classes who took to the streets during the revolution. We are in the middle of a battle, and during the battle we ca n't see whether life is