Call McCue's Taxi. We have to leave by 6:55 AM in order to be sure to make it to Riverside by 7:15. After all, it's a 3 day weekend, and we were lucky enough to get those last 2 tickets for NYC on the WorldWideBus ($20 each because it was the holiday weekend).
Even truer than their promise, McCue's Taxi arrived at 6:54 AM on Saturday morning, as we were lugging our suitcases over the threshold of our front door out onto the porch. (Levon and I always switch off -- I pull his small carry-on, while he pulls my oversized suitcase packed to the gills with clothing for all possible weather -- (see Marash Martha's Fluff on packing). No sooner had I started to make my way down our few wooden front stairs (6? -- see my post on counting stairs), but the cabbie, a swarthy man with lots of salt and pepper hair, jumped out of the cab and, coming around to the back, opened his trunk. As I approached the curb, he offered his arm to help me over the ice. Thank you, I said, surprised at the courtesy. He took our bags and placed them in the trunk of his taxi, walked around and opened the rear door for me, waited until I was settled, then carefully closed the door, and got into the driver's seat of the cab. My husband and I, now comfortably settled in the back, started chatting with this friendly cabdriver. It's been a long time since I've driven anybody to Riverside, he commented. We chatted on about the convenience of living so close to the airport, the pretty neighborhoods of Auburndale (Newton Corner has pretty houses as well, but they're built much more closely together, the cabdriver noted), how much nicer it would be to live in the country, though how much more inconvenient.
Where did you grow up, I asked the cabdriver, whose not so thick accent I somehow recognized. I grew up in the country, he said, on a farm. What kind of a farm, I asked. A vegetable farm with tomatoes and cucumbers and beans and . . . Any animals, I interrupted. Oh, yes, he continued, lots of animals -- horses and cows and pigs and chickens and . . . Where was this farm, I queried, becoming curiouser and curiouser. In Turkey, he answered. Okay, so I did recognize the accent, but not quite. . . there was a slight difference from the accents of my Turkish friends from Istanbul . . . in fact this cabdriver spoke with the same accent in English as did my father's generation! Where in Turkey? I asked. Diarbekir, he answered. Immediately my husband asked, Ismin neddir? The cabbie didn't respond, not expecting, I guess, to hear Turkish from the back seat. Ismin neddir? my husband repeated, louder this time. Do you speak Turkish? asked the cabbie, surprised at what he heard. Evet. Anam babam Marashda dolmushlar, answered my husband, as he reached for the door handle because the cab had just pulled up in front of the Riverside station. The cab driver, his eyes alight with emotion as he came around from the back of the cab with our bags, asked, Marashlusing? Evet, my husband answered. Ermeni. Ben Kurd'm, he answered, a big smile on his face. He looked as if he wanted to hug us. We were family, after all. We shared ancestral lands and difficult times.
What a warm encounter! And you made your connection, too. Too bad Megabus doesn't stop at Riverside - it can have even better deals, although $20 is GREAT. But then, Megabus is fast because it doesn't make many stops. I just took it to Washington DC, and it didn't even stop in NYC - Just once on the NJ turnpike for a lunch break, then in Baltimore, and we arrived in downtown DC, during rush hour, right on time.
ReplyDeletehe was a Kurd? the most poignant moment of Saroyan's writings was in one of the vignettes in 'My Name Is Aram'. It was a story of how the Armenians would gather and talk about the old country, a country from which they had to flee because of the depredations of the Turks. there was one Arab in the group. Arabs were the enemies of the Turks, though both Moslem, in WW1 because Arabia was occupied by the armies of the Sultan. throughout the story the Arab said not one word. What he did do was, from time to time, pick a piece of dust from his trousers, while his eyes and ears received all of the conversation, it was the fulcrum of his emotions.
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