The Space Needle
Of all the stories I wanted to write about from my summer of 2021 travel experiences, I didn’t think this one would be the first one I’d get to write.
Present
Today, I learned that there is no way to connect with your Uber driver through the app after the trip is done — unless of course, you had made contact with the driver before the trip, in the time between asking for a ride and actually taking it, in which case the driver number would have been stored in your call or message history.
Shucks!!
Took me a few minutes before I found a workaround.
See..Uber lets you report a lost item through the app when you go to “past trips”. You enter your phone number and they connect you directly with the driver (you don’t get to see the driver’s number though).
That’s what I did.
Within a few seconds, the driver was on the other side of the line.
“Hello Nisar! Sorry yeh kuch lost item ka call nahin hai. Apologies if I am bothering you. Patha nahin ki aap mujhe yaad karoge. 15–20 din pahale aapane mujhe aur mere bachchon ko Seattle Southcenter se pick-up kiya aur Needle ke paas chhoda tha. Raat mein..”
“Hello Nisar! I am sorry this is not a call about my lost item. Apologies if I am bothering you. Anyways, not sure if you would remember me. But about 15 days ago, you picked me and my kids up from Seattle Southcenter and dropped us off near the Needle. It was a night ride..”
“Yeah. Tell me..”
I could sense that he was lost a bit since his voice was stumbling through his English and Hindi dictionaries as he tried to choose the right words to respond to this rather bizarre call from me.
I could tell he couldn’t recognize me at all.
15–20 days ago — Seattle Southcenter
I had to make a choice based on the facts available in front of me — Without having done the research, I could be adventurous and look for a parking lot after I reach the city which I was not quite familiar with as yet, then park the car, and find my bearings before I could walk to the Space Needle for the already purchased tour at 9:15 PM, knowing well that I had got only 40 more minutes.
Or Uber my way to the city.
It was an easy choice.
Soon, A Honda Civic was on its way to pick us up.
After the initial confirmation of faces and names, we got in.
“Hello, how are you doing Nisar?”
“I am fine. Aap tourist hai? Kidhar se aaye?”
“I am fine. Are you tourists? Where are you from?”
I switched to Hindi and for the next 25 minutes or so, I was conversing with him mostly in Hindi, and my kids who were sitting next to me, were understandably bemused by two people, only one of them a stranger to them, speaking in a language that they didn’t know their father could hold a conversation for that long.
Nisar, our Uber driver for the night, was very keen on speaking to me in Hindi, a language he is quite familiar with but doesn’t speak often. Both our minds were searching for the right word before uttering it out loud, taking momentary pauses, but never completely stopping our stream of thoughts.
He asked me if my kids spoke Urdu or Hindi at home.
He was clearly disappointed when I told him they spoke neither.
“Why sir? Why don’t you insist? It’s very important.”
“They speak Tamil and Telugu..”
“Accha!!” (“Good”)
There was a long pause. A pause indicating that he didn’t know how to react and a pause long enough to perhaps shrug off the mild embarrassment caused by his own patronizing tone and the assumptions he had made in a few minutes.
Nisar, as I would learn, is a Post Graduate in Agriculture and had been working on a World Bank project for a few years. He said he was excited to be part of that research project but soon his role turned out to be more administrative and less research focused. He continued on the job as long as it lasted because of the exposure it gave him.
“Tamil Nadi mein anaar milthe Hain saar?”
“Haan. Lekin woh aapake desh ke anaar jaise utne tasty nahin hota..”
“Do you get pomegranates in Tamil Nadu?”
“Yes. But they are not as tasty as the ones from your country.”
Even his mask couldn’t cover his smile and I could see that in the rear view mirror. I acknowledged by nodding my head.
“Uske baad Presidential palace mein kaam kiya tha..”
“Wow..Kaisa tha?”
“Accha tha. Main ne us experience ko bhi enjoy kiya tha.”
“Then I worked at the Presidential palace.”
“Wow. How was it?”
“It was good. I enjoyed that experience too.”
And then he went onto talk about how his wife and children had moved with him to Seattle while his parents and other family members are still working there.
“How did you land up in Seattle? Not many opportunities here for you in the agricultural field I presume. Did you consider California when you migrated?”
“Yes, I did. But then..most of my friends were already here in Seattle. For me, it was easier to make this choice.”
“So what next?”
“I am still exploring. Some day, I want to get back to doing something related to my research in pomegranates. May do a PhD.”
“Yes, we need better pomegranates in the United States. I look forward to your contributions.”, I laughed.
I could sense a yearning for things to change in his face, for things to get better, for him to see his parents soon, and for life to get easier in general.
Or maybe I was just imaging as I really couldn’t see his face.
When he dropped us off at the Needle, and as we parted ways, I waved goodbye to him and wished him well.
Present
“Main sirph aapako yah poochhane ke liye call kiya tha…ki aapaka parivaar kaisa hai? jo kuchh ho raha hai wahan pe..kaisa hai??
“Theek hai. Sab theek hai.”
“I just called to check on your family and see how they are doing. With all that is going on.”
“Good. All good.”
He was still wondering why some passenger he picked up and dropped off 15 days ago would ask about his family in Seattle.
“Kya aapne unse baath kiya? Recently? Safe hai sab?”
“Did you speak to them recently? Are they safe?”
Then it clicked.
“Oh…Aap..Saar..ab tho sthiti kafi kharaab hai wahan pe.”
“Oh!! That..You..Sir, The situation is pretty bad there right now..”
“Yes. Yes. That’s what I wanted to check with you. With all that I have been processing from the news, I was reminded of you and wanted to know how you are coping with it, and how your family is doing.”
“No one knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. But for now, everyone is locked up inside their houses. They are doing fine and they are safe. They all lost their jobs they had till recently. It’s gone.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“Yes. People are rushing to get out of the country. Thankfully the US has taken control of the airport. And they are trying to help fly as many people out of the country as they could with proper documents. Right now there are a lot of people trying to get their documentation in order. They want to sort it all out and then hope they can get on that plane.”
“I hope things will settle down in the next 20–30 days.”
“Yes, sir. We will know which way the country moves after that.”
“I just want to wish your family well.”
“I hope I can do something for them and see if I can bring them here. I don’t know yet. Thank you, sir.”
“Won’t take more of your time Nisar. Stay safe. And let’s hope for the best.”
“Thank you!!”
As Nisar hung the phone up, images of Kabul airport, fleeing Afghans, those hanging on the plane tails, those who fell down from the sky while doing so, and those running with their suitcases on the streets of Kabul with fear and uncertainty in their faces — they all flashed in front of my eyes.
And before I was borne away by my waves of thoughts, and getting lost in darkness and distance, hope and helplessness — all at the same time, something Nisar said during that car ride kept echoing in my head.
“Aapka koyi aisi padosee hai jo aapke desh ke andar hamesha museebat chaahti hain, toh mamooli hona aasaan nahin hai.”
“It is not easy to be normal when you have a neighbor who wants perpetual unrest in your country.”
The dinner time conversation tonight with my son was mostly about Afghanistan. We talked a lot of politics and how the Taliban paid off the Afghan military and a bunch of Afghan politicians all the way to the top, so that there would be an absolute smooth “transition” of power. We talked about the MIC (Military-Industrial complex) and the hunger for permanent war among a certain section of media.
We know the issues of the region are more complicated than what a dinner table could hold.
So, we mostly talked about Nisar and his family. Like we know them personally. And about other Afghans whose world has suddenly turned dark.
If we were to make a time capsule of this moment in history, my hope would be that we would let the future generations know through this capsule that somewhere in the race between our partisan brains that liked to use a binary computer to solve the Afghanistan problem and our hearts that preferred to use a more complicated emotional fuzzy logic to analyze the current situation in Afghanistan, we somehow found a balance that was mostly driven by empathy and humanity.
