I used to think that it’s no one’s fault that we’re so caught up, overwhelmed by everything that surrounds us. It has been, after all, an eternal struggle, between our simple earthly desires and lofty ambitions. So I forgave myself for the self-love, at least until the other day when the brother and I happened to be passengers in a certain cab. He, the cabbie, like us, was an expat, geographical particularities are immaterial. What’s of prominence is the mirror he presented. Unfortunately, I cannot recall his name or face (I was always bad at that game), not that it would have mattered anyway. It doesn’t matter that his struggle was just like all expat struggles we have heard so much about. It is of no importance that he would have completed a 17 hour shift (cabbies work on percentage commission against net revenue) by the time he had dropped us off at our destination. It should be of no surprise that he is out to make a few extra dirhams for his wife and two sons back in the home country. It’s of no importance that he had made a fortune in Dubai, in another life, went back to live a better one at home and was duped out of more than half a million Dirhams by his close friend. Because, like Marlon James’ shapeshifting hyena we all know that ‘nobody ever gets betrayed by their enemy’. It’s not important that he was reduced to nothing and had to pawn his wife’s jewellery to pay of the debts and had to scrape together whatever he could to save his younger son who was in the hospital at the time. Nope, none of that matters, however, what is of worthwhile mention is that this life, this guise of his as the comely, friendly, philosophizing cabbie is his second coming, here. What deserves the silent applause, your gasp of epiphany is his ability to bare his failings and call them his personal lesson, not of embarrassment but of ownership. And, at the outset of it, the realisation that he is wiser and richer; in accepting that ‘my wife, it was her strength that kept me going’; that he now knew who was true and who wasn’t. We parted soon after, not anymore as simply cabbie and passenger. On our drive back home from the office basement, I looked at the city passing by under a new cloud. I wondered at the cabs that rushed through. I wondered at all the faceless people that passed by in their cars, those waiting on the sidewalks, flagging down cabs, those running towards the bus that is about leave, those in their homes, watching down onto the streets, rushing through dinner, jealousy scrolling through their phones, playing with their kids and painfully putting them to sleep; nervously glancing at the clock, time lost into the night, hoping against hope that the next day shall go slower. I imagine them with stories for memories, reminiscence and desires. Dreams and nightmares, fears and forced optimism. I imagine superheroes, commanders and dictators going to sleep in their studios and bhks, no ballads sung for their wars, their scars unseen, marathons unheard of, unrecorded legends, to be forgotten. I see Giants, Gigantes, not the typical jack in the beanstalk antagonists portrayed as despicable as a fable can, nor the Goliath like biblical for – but the Road Dahl’s BFG like giants, fighting the gods of Olympia, Uranus and of this Earth. Giants who don’t get written about, mostly made antagonists in their own lives, caricatures of a myopic perception. Their emotions cause the seasons and their pain, nature’s worst. Mortal humans, fighting eternal wars. I imagine a city of anthologies, a world of short stories slowly being edged off of a ledge into a shredder, new stories taking their place, cliffhangers and all.
R
Renutva 