by A. X. Ahmad
That’s at least twenty cheaper than Manhattan. “Thanks. Could you do it now?”
The old man nods, and delves into the shed, returning with a mirror. He grunts, handling a socket wrench deftly as he unscrews the mirror attachment. Ranjit leans against the car and watches.
“So … how long have you had this place?”
“Since eighty-five. Good thing you found me today. Next week I’m going back to Punjab. Had enough of this bloody country. Nothing is the same since nine-eleven. Hey, you don’t want to sink too much money into this piece of junk.” The old man gestures with his beard at the car, his hands busy. “Those TLC chutiyas are going to make you all buy those new minivans, hanh?”
Ranjit nods. The mayor wants to replace all the Ford Vics with energy-efficient vans that will probably handle like hippos. Never mind that most garages cannot afford to replace their aging fleets.
“Sardar, you’re right about that … Listen, I’m looking for a guy, Kishen. He works somewhere around here—”
“Kishen? You think I’m stupid?” The old man stops working. “You didn’t come here for a bloody mirror. I already told your people, I don’t know where Kishen is.”
“Hey, wait—I’m not with anyone. What people are you talking about?”
“You damn well know.” The old man grabs the half-attached mirror and yanks it off, screws flying into the air. “Get out of my garage, or I’m going to beat your brains out!” He raises his socket wrench threateningly.
Ranjit takes a step back, when suddenly the old Sikh gasps and leans against the car. His face is pale and beaded with sweat.
“Hey, are you okay?” Ranjit grabs on to the man’s arm, steadying him.
“My heart.” The old man’s voice drops to a raspy whisper. “Pills are inside, on my desk.”
The interior of the garage is a nightmare of salvaged car seats, tires, and boxes of auto parts, but on the old wooden desk, amongst stacks of papers, Ranjit finds an orange plastic pillbox.
He hurries back and the old man dry-swallows two Sorbitrate tablets. Grasping Ranjit’s arm, he staggers back into the garage and sinks down onto the ripped-out backseat of an old Ford. His face is pale, his breathing labored and arrhythmic.
“Shall I call an ambulance? Is there anyone else here?”
“No ambulance.” The old Sikh jerks his thumb toward the back of the lot. “My wife’s here, but don’t call her. She can’t see me like this, she gets too worried.”
He sits with his eyes closed in the grease-smelling gloom, breathing deeply, and soon his normal coloring returns. Why has talking about Kishen triggered his heart condition?
“Feeling better?”
“I’ll be fine. The pains come and go.” The man opens his eyes, looking ten years older.
“I promise you, I have nothing to do with the people who came here before. Tell me what happened.”
“Kishen used to work for me. He vanished from here, about a month ago, with two Mercedes engines. I told the cops, but what do they care? Then yesterday, two men showed up here, dressed all fancy, wearing blue blazers, cowboy boots. But when they opened their mouths, I could tell they were low class, they spoke Mumbai Hindi. Asked me where Kishen was, where some fool called Mohan was. I told them that I didn’t know. They said if I was lying, they would come back and break my legs … I took a tire iron and chased them out. Hanh, they left in their fancy limo fast enough—”
The old man is getting agitated, his face reddening as he relives his memory.
“Okay, okay. Thanks. Now are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Hanh, hanh. Thank you for your help, Sardar, you’re a good man. Why is everyone suddenly looking for Kishen?”
“It’s better that you don’t get involved. Here’s my number. Call me if they come back, please.”
“Like that, hanh? Well, if you do find Kishen, ask him where the hell my Mercedes engines are, okay?”
Ranjit nods, and walks back to his cab. A rooster has wandered in from somewhere, and is pecking in the dirt a few feet away.
* * *
As he drives away, Ranjit’s head hurts from the heat, and his mouth is thick and gluey. His one lead is a dead end: Mohan’s cousin has vanished, having stolen from his former employer. But who are the two men who came here and threatened the old Sikh? Who else could be looking for Kishen?
He desperately needs to talk to Leela and find out what she knows; maybe he should go back to Little Guyana. She probably doesn’t live too far from where he lost her, and he could ask around … but if those two thugs find him snooping around, things could get ugly. The last thing he needs is to get into another gunfight.
Just then his cell phone rings. All morning he’s been letting Ali Khan’s calls go to voice mail, but now he gives up and answers.
“Aare, Ranjit. Have you gone mad? You were supposed to give me the cab back last night. Jacobo is going to cut my balls off! You want me to go through life with no balls? Hanh? Is that what you want?”
Ali calls him a goat fucker, a cow fucker, and the son of an alligator. Usually Ranjit retaliates with his own invectives, and the two men escalate their abuse, using all the animals they can think of. Today Ranjit maintains his silence, speaking only when Ali pauses for breath.
“I needed the car, but I’m heading back now. See you at Karachi Kabob in half an hour. I’m sorry, okay?”
There is a sudden silence as Ali hears the defeat in Ranjit’s tone.
“Oi, Ranjit? Are you okay? What is going on?”
The sun is in Ranjit’s eyes as he passes the deserted Hunt’s Point wholesale market, its chain-link fence surrounded by big loops of barbed wire, like a prison yard. Thinking of the events that have brought him to this godforsaken place makes him sick to the pit of his stomach.
“Ranjit? You okay, right?”
He takes a deep breath. “I’m fine, Ali, I’ll see you in a bit.”
He hangs up, and then it hits him: yes, Mohan is holed up somewhere in this enormous city, and Kishen has vanished, but he has an incredible resource at his disposal: his fellow cabbies go everywhere, see everything, and come into contact with thousands of people every day. If he puts the word out, someone is going to see something.
All the Indian and Pakistani cabbies will be eating lunch right now, a perfect time to make an appeal. Ranjit speeds on Bruckner Boulevard out of the spooky silence of the Bronx and toward the clamor and bustle of Queens.
* * *
Karachi Kabob is squeezed in between a strip club and a used car lot, a long, narrow space that barely fits a counter and a few greasy plastic-topped tables. Its walls are painted a bright orange, and the television in the corner blasts Bollywood dance videos at a deafening volume. The window at the front is so dirty that the outside world has taken on a blurry, under-sea aspect, but the cabbies don’t seem to mind; they come here for the food, not the atmosphere.
Ranjit walks in, smells the aroma of roasting meat and rice, and realizes that he is very hungry. He waves to Ali, who is in his regular corner seat; today he’s wearing an orange and purple Hawaiian shirt with naked women on it.
Ranjit peers into the steam trays: there is rich rice biriyani, chicken korma swimming in oil, even paya, cow-hoof curry. Remembering his vow, he avoids these, and orders the healthiest food there is: whole-wheat rotis, a dish of thick kaali-daal lentils, and some salad with a yogurt dressing.
As he walks toward Ali, he passes two tables, and the cabbies sitting there nod at him curtly. To an outsider, all the men—brown skinned, clad in polyester half-sleeve shirts and trousers—look the same, but Ranjit can easily spot the differences.
The Pakistanis are Punjabis from the north, taller and burlier, their plates heaped with orange tandoori chicken and hunks of mutton curry. The Indians are slighter, Gujaratis from the west and some South Indians, and they prefer smaller dishes of fried vegetables, scooped up with puffy puris. Usually the two groups eat together, but today they are sitting strangely stiff-ba
cked at separate tables.
Pulling up a chair, Ranjit sits across from Ali and gestures at the men.
“What’s going on, Ali bhai? They’re behaving strangely. What is it, a cricket match?”
The rivalry between India and Pakistan is played out these days through cricket matches, and when one country wins, there is a rift between the two groups. It usually lasts a few days.
“Worse than that. There was a match, yes, but also a lot of drinking.” Ali’s bulldog face wrinkles in concentration as he sucks the marrow from a mutton bone. “Some fools started arguing, and it got out of control. One of the Pakistanis stabbed one of the Indians. You didn’t hear about it?”
“Who did it?”
“Afzal Mian, the stupid hothead. The Indian guy ended up in the emergency room with a punctured lung. They don’t know if he’s going to make it. Now the police are all over us. Banging on doors, asking to see papers. Everyone is pissed off.”
Ranjit knows Afzal. He’s a young tough who favors tight T-shirts; rumors are that he’s the black sheep of an important Pakistani family.
“Did they catch him?”
“No, yaar. Who’s going to talk to the cops? You answer one question, they want to know about your wife’s cousin’s sister, and then the next thing you know, your whole family is deported. Afzal’s hiding at his aunt’s place, above the noodle shop, in Flushing. Fucking idiot.”
Ranjit thinks about what Patel said: these days everyone fears the cops, immigrants most of all.
Ali sucks out the last bit of marrow and slurps it down.
“You didn’t know this happened? Where have you been, anyway? You were supposed to return my cab last night.”
Ranjit has to think fast. The truth is too big and complicated for Ali to handle. “Sorry, yaar. I went on a date with this woman last night, had a little too much to drink, whacked the mirror on your cab. When you called, I was trying to have it fixed, but I couldn’t find a replacement part…”
“Naughty, naughty.” Ali waves a beringed, chubby hand at him. “Who was it? One of those Latinas you meet in your cab? Hanh? I hope you didn’t take her to the parking garage?”
Ali is referring to an abandoned parking garage in Midtown, well known to all the cabbies; it has a faulty barrier that can be easily lifted up. The men take women up there, or go there to nap.
“No, not the garage. This was a classy woman, she had her own place in Chelsea…” Ranjit smiles modestly, and Ali grins from ear to ear, his chins wobbling with mirth.
“Okay, I’ll forgive you this time. Jacobo will chew my ass off for the mirror, and it’ll cost a hundred at least, but I forgive you.”
“There is one more thing…” Ranjit breaks off a strip of roti and scoops up some of the thick daal. He hates lying to his old friend, and his hunger of a few minutes ago has evaporated.
“Kya? Because if you want to borrow money, let me remind you that you owe me thirty from that time we went out for dinner.”
Ranjit knows that Ali doesn’t mean this; his friend would give him the Hawaiian shirt off his voluminous back.
“You know that Shanti is coming, and I’m moving to this new place in Astoria, right? They want a security deposit, first month’s rent, last month’s rent, plus I have to buy a bed for her. I’m wiped out, yaar. And there’s this guy, he owes me five hundred bucks, and he’s vanished, the chootiya…”
“Who?” Ali chews on a fresh piece of mutton. “One of the drivers? I’ll take care of him, no problem.”
“This guy, Kishen—he’s from my village in Punjab—came over here as a mechanic, didn’t have a pot to piss in. I lent him the money to get settled, he swore he’d pay me back. He used to work as a mechanic in the Bronx, but now I don’t know where he is. I need that five hundred back, yaar.”
Ali belches and pushes his plate away. It looks like a battlefield, littered with shattered mutton bones and half-eaten pieces of potato.
“This mutton is lousy. Five hundred? And this guy has done the bunk?”
“He’s still somewhere in the city, at some garage. Works exclusively on fancy cars. If you put the word out with your guys, maybe something will turn up…”
Ali nods. “I can ask the Pakistani drivers. But that’s like using one hand. If you really want to find this guy, we’ll need the Indians, too. And those fools aren’t talking to each other.”
“I’ll talk to Murgi.” Ranjit gestures at the far table, where a bespectacled Indian driver sits reading a battered paperback. With his math brain, Sridhar Murugappan could have found a job at a software company, but his Marxist beliefs keep him driving a cab.
Ranjit takes his tray of cold food over to Murgi’s table. The driver snaps shut a book titled Capitalism and Its Discontents and looks up, his pointy nose quivering. Ranjit retells his made-up story, and Murgi looks gloomy.
“Ranjit Sahib, I’d love to help you, but our people are angry at the Pakis. It’s stupid. The proletariat should be united. We need to stand together, not feud like this. As it is, this mayor is making our life hell. Maybe the next thing he’ll do is outlaw turbans and beards. Maybe we’ll all have to wear pastels and do a song and dance for the tourists…”
Ranjit takes another bite of food. “Look, Murgi. Someone should just go and tell the cops where Afzal is. That way he’ll be behind bars, and everyone will feel better.”
“Nobody is going to talk to the cops.” Murgi looks around nervously. “A lot of these guys, they were driving on nine-eleven, but they got no compensation, no medical treatment. Instead, the cops questioned them, roughed them up. They could be shipped off to Guantanamo at any time. It’s in the interest of the state to have an extra-judicial process…”
“Okay, okay, I get your point.”
Ranjit looks around the room of sullen men. These guys have to help him find Kishen; that’s his only connection to Mohan.
Grabbing Murgi’s thin arm, he hoists him to his feet. “Come with me.”
He whispers in Ali’s ear, and the fat man slowly levers himself to his feet, his ponderous gut pushing against the table.
Flanked by Murgi and Ali, Ranjit clears his throat, and bangs on the table for silence. The conversation gradually ebbs, someone mutes the television, and the two tables of cabbies stare at Ranjit.
“Bhaiyo,” he begins, addressing them as brothers. “I need a few minutes of your time. You all know me. I am a man of few words.” He gestures around the room. “Look at you, sitting apart from each other. This way we are behaving towards each other—it is unnatural. We’ve all broken bread together. We’ve been to each other’s houses.”
He stops to gaze around the room. “Okay, Afzal Mian did a bad thing. But he is one man, he does not represent all the Pakistanis. Look, back home, the politicians do their best to fuel the hatred between India and Pakistan. It helps to always have an enemy to fight and to blame.
“But here, in America, to follow those false divisions is suicide. You think the Americans can see any difference between Indians and Pakistanis? We’re just a brown face in a taxi, they treat us the same, they tip us the same. Who of us hasn’t been called ‘hajji’ or ‘towelhead’? Who of us hasn’t been told to go home? Hanh? All we have is each other. The next time you’re on the Cross Bronx and your tire blows out, you won’t worry if the cabbie who stops to help you is Indian or Pakistani. We are in this together.”
The silence is broken only by the shuffling of feet and the clearing of throats.
“Look, I need your help right now. This guy, Kishen Singh, he owes me money, and he’s disappeared. I’m not a rich man, and my daughter is coming very soon. I need my money back, and I need to find him. You all are out in the streets every day, you see everything, you hear everything. Please work together, and help me find this man.
“Please,” Ranjit repeats. “I am appealing to your good sense. Help me.”
One of the Pakistani cabdrivers, a stooped man with gray hair, gets up slowly. He carries his plate over to the Indian tab
le and sits down in Murgi’s vacated seat.
“Sardar, I will help you,” he says. “I agree we are one.”
There is a rumble of conversation—Ranjit can’t tell if it is assent or anger—and then men are getting up. They are sitting down at each other’s tables, clapping each other on the back, and soon the restaurant echoes with the sound of loud, embarrassed voices.
Ranjit waits. When the conversation has died down, he tells the men everything he knows about Kishen Singh. The cabbies listen intently, and when he is done, many of them come up to shake his hand.
Ali Khan claps Ranjit on the back. “Wah-wah. What a speech you made. You should consider running for union president, yaar. And now, some of us have to go to work. Can I have my cab back?”
After giving him a bone-crushing hug, Ali departs, and Ranjit pushes away his plate of half-eaten food. Through the filthy window, he watches the big man lumber to his cab, gingerly feel the stub where the mirror had been, then drive away. The other cabbies are already on their phones, gesturing as they walk to their cars.
The word will spread exponentially now, branching out to garages and chop shops, greasy restaurants and tea-joints, to every nook and cranny of the cabdriver universe. No doubt the story will get garbled with each retelling, but that’s okay: the message will be that one of their own has been wronged, and that Kishen has to make it right.
The cabbies could take a day, or a week to find him. Meanwhile, Ranjit can’t just wait as precious time ticks away. He could go back to Little Guyana and track Leela down, but that is way too dangerous …
Wait. He won’t have to go back there. Even if Leela is hiding from him, she will have to go to work today; surely nannies at fancy places like the Dakota don’t get Saturday off. And if she is looking after a four-year-old, surely she’ll leave the building and take the child for a walk—Americans are very insistent that their children get fresh air.
And Central Park is right next door to the Dakota. He remembers the clusters of nannies he’s seen there in the late afternoon, dark-skinned West Indian, Guyanese, and Haitian women pushing their fair-skinned charges around in six-hundred-dollar strollers. If he’s lucky, he can find Leela there, far away from her hoodlum friends.
