by H. M. Naqvi
A year later, however, just after Independence Day, at the beginning of the end of the Great Bull Run, I was fired. It was quick and efficient, and the pink slip was unexpectedly yellow. After I had cleared my cubicle into a shoebox, my VP was good enough to invite me into his office. “Take a seat,” he said, kicking a chair. “You know, this isn’t personal, right?” I suppose I did; it had to do with the bottom line, the Invisible Hand. Although he must have spoken for ten minutes, I only caught his concluding remarks: “My hands were tied. You’ll do okay, sport. You’re a team player. You’re taking one for the team.” I nodded, then walked out, shoebox tucked under arm.
Although Ma did not know and did not need to worry—I kept sending money home fortnightly—toward the end of the summer, my savings, astutely invested in stocks with high price-to-equity ratios, in companies with anticipated future earnings contingent on clicks per page or FDA approval of some clinical drug, had been reduced to a few cents on the dollar. I cut cable, cellular service, and magazine subscriptions and began investing in lottery tickets. (Hey, you never know.) There wasn’t much more I could do. The market had soured. I found myself in a profound funk.
On afternoons that I actually made it off the futon and out of my apartment (on average, four days out of seven), I moved from refuge to respite. I had developed a routine, a tour of the Upper West Side, really, commencing at the Moroccan-run newsstand down the street, where I purchased the Times and made small talk with the proprietor, pausing at Gray’s Papaya for a Recession Special (two hot dogs and a Tropical Breeze for $2.99), and ending up at Central Park. Under the weeping willows of the Great Lawn, I surveyed the paper, from the pictures of affluent affection on the engagements page to the sports section, commiserating with the gritty but hapless, Ewingless Knicks. Every once in a while I would stretch my neck, watching teenagers tossing Frisbees, au pairs supervising toddlers, sunbathing. Sometimes I would listen in on conversations, cocking my head to one side while pretending to read. Other times I dozed.
On the way back, I would frequent used bookstores and record stores, and on Sunday nights, I caught flicks at the Lincoln Plaza or the Cineplex three blocks up. On Tuesday evenings, I drifted into museums because admission was free, gawking at broken Doric columns and noseless busts of Caesars at the Met, studying the likes of Goya and El Greco at the Frick, or tracing the peculiar turn in art from representation to idea at the Guggenheim, something I could never get my head around. After all, dung is dung. Once or twice, when feeling adventurous, I ventured uptown to the Cloisters or downtown to the World Trade Center rooftop, where I contemplated the world and my place in it.
Jimbo had shown up several times during my blue period like Santa in the off-season, unannounced and bearing care packages, a CD that he had remixed the night before, or a track that profoundly stirred him (and would inevitably profoundly stir me). There was a time when we would listen to Nusrat, Nina, Jesus Christ Superstar in rhapsodic rapture till dawn, but in those days DJ Jumbolaya was pressed for time because he was on the verge of something big: a project with that Queens-based Pakistani siren whose techno anthem had stirred us all the year before. The Duck had introduced him to her, and the two had hit it off, as she had needed a producer attuned to her sensibilities, while he had needed material and a muse.
Another time he had huffed and puffed up the stairs with this bootleg track called “Freestyle Dive” from an electronic duo who hailed from “the Peshawar underground scene.” It blew my mind. We lounged like geckos in the afternoon sun, inert but alert to the changes in melody and mood and light. Before taking off to set up turnstiles for a gig—vodka promotional, bar mitzvah—he would say something like “I carry my theme music under my thumb.” It was great to have the monotony of those days broken by the sound of Jimbo.
Some afternoons AC dragged me out for lunch and pointers. Slapping me on the back, he would say things like “Buck up, chum!” or “Shake the world off your shoulders!” and, ingesting slice after slice of pizza, would philosophize thus: “You know, when we break up with our girlfriends, or our parents die—or we get fired—it seems that the world has come to an end.” Placing his greasy hand on mine, to make sure I was listening, he continued: “It’s strange, this, ah, instinctive anticipation of extinction, of Judgment Day. It’s irrational, but that’s the way we’ve been configured by old Mama Nature. You follow, chum?” I barely did. Sometimes I suspected that AC was talking not only to himself but about himself. “Arguably that’s why our species has been so successful. The dodo would still be around if it anticipated its end. Mark my words: the platypus is on its way out, but we’ll carry on …”
AC had been on sabbatical for two years, give or take a semester. Unable to summon the Olympic discipline required to complete his doctorate in intellectual history (or as he liked to say, the “history of history”), he withdrew from the New School one fine day, then vanished into the musty confines of his apartment. Jimbo and I would call a few times a day, undeterred by his abrasive message—I’m here but not here—an adumbrative echo, he claimed, of some mantra of Continental philosophy. One night we even tried to break into his place to rescue him from himself, but the neighbors called the police on us. Scurrying down the stairs, however, we knew in the back of our minds that AC could take care of himself.
When AC finally emerged four months later, he sported a scrim of mustache above his lip and cited the “tyranny of the third person, the pretense of objectivity” as an “epistemological dead end.” Although we couldn’t make head or tail of AC’s rhetorical jujitsu then, the epiphany fundamentally changed him: he emerged a man of action, a self-styled public crusader, and in that effort began volunteering at soup kitchens and area churches before settling as a substitute at P.S. 67, a rough-and-tumble South Bronx school that had repeatedly failed to meet federal testing goals.
There was no doubt that AC had a talent for instruction, for edification. We learned that he organized interclass poetry slams, field trips to museums, the Botanic Garden, the Cloisters, Astroland. We learned of other aspects of his heterodox pedagogy: he was known to rap the Romantics, perform handstands to illustrate the force of gravity. He was also known to purchase books from his own pocket—by the pound, at the Strand—or, in flagrant disregard for copyright laws, photocopy entire novels from his own library as handouts. Although it was difficult for us to reconcile AC’s hard-partying nights with his day job, over time he was recognized by others, garnering prizes and medals (inscribed in Latin for “Excellence in Teaching”) that he carried around with him wherever he went, pinned on the inside lining of his velour jacket.
• • •
When I thought about it, remaining sequestered, hunkered in my apartment, I too awaited an epiphany, direction, a way out. And one hot, fateful weeknight in early August, I whimsically would have one. Feeling faint and forlorn circa three in the morning, I took a cab to a now-defunct twenty-four-hour dhaba in Little India popular with cabbies, bankers, kids from NYU and Hunter, and the neighborhood streetwalkers. As we neared, I noticed the wide-shouldered, walrus-mustached cabbie scrutinizing me in the rearview mirror, as if attempting to discern the color of my eyes.
“You are liking the food here?” he finally asked. I told him that the buffet was decent, but nothing beat the fare back home. “You are Pakistani?” he inquired. I nodded. “You are from Karachi.” Wondering how he could tell, I nodded again, but before I could get my head around the matter, he asked, “You will eat with me?”
Glancing at the license wedged in the Plexiglas partition, which read “Karim, Abdul,” I replied, “I will eat with you, Karim Sahab.” I felt grateful, even touched; I hadn’t been invited out to dinner for some time.
Though it was late, seven or eight other diners feasted on generous portions while enjoying an old Lollywood flick on the TV fixed above the counter, starring the legendary “chocolate-box hero.” It harkened back to simple times and simple pleasures. After ordering nihari for two, we tore into naans an
d doused them into the soupy, savory dish of calf calves, waxing nostalgic about our hometown. There was much to recall: Bundoo Khan’s legendary seekh kababs, picnicking in the shade of the palm trees at the Jinnah Mausoleum, riding pillion on a Honda C70, the tangy whiff of the Arabian Sea. Swept by sentiment, by the idea of driving fast and carefree at night, I heard myself say, “Karim Sahab, I want to become a cab driver.”
It was a revelation to both of us.
Stroking his luxurious whiskers, Abdul Karim did not readily respond. Instead, he picked his teeth with a toothpick, knocked back a glass of water, rinsed, swallowed. “It’s tuff life,” he finally said, “tuff business. You are sure?” I nodded vigorously. “Cocksure?” “Cocksure,” I repeated.
In an effort to bolster my case, I emphasized that I had been driving since the age of fourteen, or about a third of my life, and was in the possession of a valid American driver’s license. I added that I was responsible and tidy.
Abdul Karim stroked his whiskers some more. Then, leaning into me, he told me that after years of driving, he had been on the lookout for “sumbady nat anybady” to share the week with because he wanted to spend quality time with his family but “all the buoys” he met were “first-class rotters.” The stars, it seemed, were aligned. In an avuncular tone, he said, “Tum achay bachay ho,”which translates to “You’re a good kid,” and after delivering a pithy speech invoking unity, faith, and discipline, principles that guided his career, he offered me a job and his hand. Unbeknownst to most, especially Ma, I would become, in less than a fortnight, a bonafide New York City cabbie.
Abdul Karim explained to me that most cabbies worked for fleet operators, paying a leasing fee by shift or for an extended period of time, but he was that increasingly rare animal known in cabbie argot as an “owner-operator”—a medallion holder who drives his own cab. I would be his one and only employee. Abdul Karim walked me through the entire process. Getting a cabbie license can typically take up to seventy calendar days, but he suggested that I opt for what the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission calls the “expedited processing system,” whereby it’s possible to secure one within ten days, two weeks.
“To be qualified,” Abdul Karim would explain, “you must be having no history of criminal nature and no prior revocations. You must be owing no money to DMV, PVB, or TLC and you must be having letter from owner, which I will be giving.” Moreover, you must:
“be at least 19 years of age”;
“be a legal resident of the United States and have a legal address in the United States”;
“be examined by a doctor and have the doctor sign and date the medical history form”;
have a “chauffeur’s license or equivalent”;
have an original Social Security card;
have “no outstanding obligations to the DMV, NYC PVB, or NYC TLC”;
“file a notarized Child Support Certification form”;
“complete a NYS DMV certified defensive driving class no more than 6 months before filing the application”;
“complete the TLC driver application and have the form … notarized …;” and
“purchase 3 money orders totaling $219.”
The procedure was surprisingly straightforward: I appeared at the TLC office one afternoon, with a manila folder stuffed with forms, photographs, identification cards, and other paper work, and walked out forty-five minutes later with what is called a hack license. Then Mini Auntie organized a doctor’s examination at Beth Israel (I told her it was required by my next job, which she assumed was in the banking industry), and Abdul Karim hooked me up with his friend for the requisite eighty-hour driving course at the cumbersomely named H.A.N.A.C./ NYS Federation of Taxi Drivers Academy in Long Island City. The course was tough going.
For two weeks, I woke at the crack of dawn, showered, shaved, and changed, grabbed a blueberry bagel and coffee at the corner bodega, took the 2 to Times Square, and then the W to Long Island City. Fifteen minutes by car on clear roads, it was a grueling hour, hour-and-a-half commute at rush hour to H.A.N.A.C./NYS Federation of Taxi Drivers Academy. Known to us cabbies as Hunuck, the building, like most of the architecture in Long Island City, is uninspired and functional. The classroom was neat and spare but reeked of sweat, anxiety, and by day’s end, mysterious foreign foods. Classes began at eight-thirty and continued till five-thirty and if you were late, you’d have to make up lost time.
There were nineteen of us, none of whom was Pakistani (although I learned that South Asians comprised a third of the New York cabbie population, distributed almost equally among Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Indians). A bony Indian from Patna, a wide-eyed Bangladeshi, a square-faced Egyptian, and a small, intense Xingjiangi fellow sat up front, taking abundant notes, while the self-designated backbenchers—an Albanian, a Haitian, and a Sikh—mostly glowered. They had that look in their eyes that said, I break you in two. The rest hailed from the Dark Continent: there was a Kenyan night-watchman, a Beninese busboy and a convivial Congolese tribesman named Kojo with whom I became lunch buddies. Over sandwiches and soda, he regaled me with riveting tales of his barefoot and bloody escape from the copper-rich province of Kivu during a routine spasm of violence.
The whole Hunuck experience recalled freshman orientation, without the balloons and handouts, pizza parties, barbecues, and otherwise nurturing environment. Our instructor, the sole Caucasian in our midst, introduced himself as Gator. Bald, slack-jawed, six feet something, and an A-hole, Gator was known to pitch an eraser at you if you fell asleep, or were not paying attention, or sometimes if you couldn’t string together a sentence in the Queen’s English. “Listen up, knuckle-heads,” he’d say every morning, “we got a shitload to do, so I ain’t repeatin’ myself, ’n’ I ain’t teachin’ ESL.”
Over the course of a fortnight, we covered much ground, from traffic laws to the topography of each borough, including each hotel, hospital, highway extension, and dead end. Lectures were typically punctuated by off-color anecdotes from what could have only been personal experience: “There are still crack whores in Bushwick who’ll give you a blowjob for five smackers!” At such junctures, the front-benchers inevitably asked, “But will it be on the exam, please?” Gator might have been a proper asshole, but the Gator Method seemed to work: only one of us failed (and everybody called everybody else knucklehead by the end).
On the last day, we said our farewells with genuine feeling, though nobody really kept in touch, but on 9/11 we frantically dug up each other’s numbers, scrawled on the backs of receipts and folded scraps of notebook paper, and called to exchange disyllabic assurances and expressions of disbelief: “You all right, man?” “Yeah, I’m okay, you all right?” “Yeah, I’m okay but is screwed up.” “Yeah, screwed up.” “You hear about anybody?” Only the Albanian and the Beninese busboy were unaccounted for. They might have returned to their homelands, or changed houses or numbers. We never knew.
Kojo and I remained friendly and took the TLC taxi test together at eight in the morning of an auspicious day, August 14th, 2001, Pakistan Day. A hundred or so hopeful cabbies milled about outside the center on Queens Boulevard, red-eyed, excited, pacing while chain-smoking Newports—everybody with the same fears and aspirations, the same information pulsing in their heads. Kojo, dressed in a metallic green suit and wafting cologne, quizzed me as we stood outside. At half past eight, we hugged each other and filed inside, pressed up against one another. Under the vigilant gaze of the five proctors, we were handed numbers that corresponded to seats in the hall. Soon afterward the Master Cabbie arrived, a small gray man with a weak voice, and went over the format of the three-part exam: in the English section the MC played an audiotape of street addresses that we were to match on our booklets; the map-reading section involved matching street addresses to our individual handout maps; and finally, the tertiary portion was SAT-style, multiple choice, with questions that included the following:
Which of the following is false?
Madison Square
Park is located at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue.
Times Square is so named because there is a big clock on the tower.
Wall Street is so named because there used to be a wall there to keep the Indians out.
Manhattan College is not located in Manhattan.
Long Island University is located on Long Island.
Throgs Neck Bridge crosses
Jamaica Bay
Westchester Bay
The East River
The Harlem River
Newtown Creek
Another name for Willowbrook Parkway is
Malcolm X Boulevard
Jackie Robinson Parkway
Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Expressway
H. Rap Brown Drive
Master Fard Mohammed Parkway