Vignette The Taxi Driver

 

This is the first in a series of vignettes about chance encounters I've had with people over the years in different places.

My friend called her favorite taxi driver for me. It would be easier than lugging my suitcase and laptop to the number 144 bus, La Défense and Gare du Lyon.

I'd spent a week with her, my former neighbor in Geneva, in her tiny Paris flat. When we lived across the hall from one another, we'd shared meals, experiences joyful, frustrating and ordinary. She had become a family member of choice. 

Now she lived in Paris as a medical resident I would visit often pretending, I too was a Parisian and Hemingway writing and looking out her window at the Paris rooftops when I wasn't exploring the city.

Mohammed, the taxi driver, was on time. With his long beard, he would have been at home on any street in Damascus, Algiers or Cairo. As I do with taxi drivers, I engaged him in conversation.

From then on whenever I left her flat to go home to Geneva, Mohammed would drive me. Our conversations covered everything from Obama, French politics, Afghanistan, Iraq, Damascus, food, family, and being an outsider from our birth cultures.

After one Christmas visit when my daughter had joined us, he took her to Charles de Gaulle. "She's the most precious person in my life, be careful," I said to him.

"I know," he said.

On one trip, he said, "You have to meet my sister." He dialed her. On speaker we had a three-way conversation. She was an English teacher, but to not exclude him, we spoke French.

"The next time you're in Paris, you'll have to come to me for couscous. I make wonderful couscous."

Mohammed confirmed that. 

It was not to be. My friend moved.

At Gare du Lyon, he handed me my laptop.

"Shukran," I said.

"Awfan," he replied.