“Pakistan,” the cabbie said in response to my first question.
“15 years,” he said in response to my second.
“You know, it’s funny,” he said as we pulled around the corner away from the bar and toward my sweet, sweet bed.
“When I first come to America, I don’t speak a word of English. And I ask a friend what I should do when a customer come. And he say, ‘Just say yeah yeah yeah.’
“So a customer come. He’s drunk and he say, ‘Do you want to fight me?’ And I say, ‘Yeah yeah yeah.’
“He break my nose.
“So I go to my friend and say, ‘I say yeah yeah yeah and he break my nose.’ So my friend say, ‘OK, just say no no no.’
“So a couple days later, I get a fare and I see it’s that guy. I try to pull away but he get in my cab before then. He look at me and say, ‘Did it hurt when I punched you?’ and I say, ‘No no no.’
“He break my nose again.
“I go to my friend, he say ‘Just say yeah no yeah no.’
“I go back out and get the guy again. He look at me.
“‘Do you remember me?’
“‘Yeah’
“‘You remember my punch?’
“‘No.’
“He break my nose.”
The cabbie laughed.
“That’s just a joke, of course,” the cabbie said.
“Of course,” I responded.
“But this other time …”
And the cabbie and I continued down the road.
