“We will go over to Eighth Avenue, come uptown that way,” says the taxi driver. They turn onto the street, where the traffic has stopped completely/There is a cacophony of horns, but the cars do not move.
The driver sways in his seat. His chin begins to descend to his chest, one, two, three times. Then he begins, gently, to snore. Salim reaches out to wake the man, hoping that he is doing the right thing. As he shakes his shoulder, the driver moves, and Salim’s hand brashes the man’s face, knocking the sunglasses from his face into his lap.
The taxi driver opens his eyes, reaches for and replaces the black plastic sunglasses, but it is too late. Salim has seen his eyes.
The car crawls forward in the rain. The numbers onithe meter increase.
“Are you going to kill me?” asks Salim.
The taxi driver’s lips are pressed together. Salim watches his face in the driver’s mirror.
“No,” says the driver, very quietly.
The car stops again. The rain patters on the roof.
Salim begins to speak. “My grandmother swore that she had seen an ifrit, or perhaps a marid, late one evening, on the edge of the desert. We told her that it was just a sandstorm, a little wind, but she said no, she saw its face, and its eyes, like yours, were burning flames.”
The driver smiles, but his eyes are hidden behind the black plastic glasses, and Salim cannot tell whether there is any humor in that smile or not. “The grandmothers came here too,” he says.
“Are there many jinn in New York?” asks Salim.
“No. Not many of us.”
“There are the angels, and there are men, who Allah made from mud, and then there are the people of the fire, the jinn,” says Salim.
, “People know nothing about my people here,” says the driver. “They think we grant wishes. If I could grant wishes do you think I would be driving a cab?”
“I do not understand.”
The taxi driver seems gloomy. Salim stares at his face in the mirror as he speaks, watching the ifrit’s dark lips.
“They believe that we grant wishes. Why do they believe that? I sleep in one stinking room in Brooklyn. I drive this taxi for any stinking freak who has the money to ride in it, and for some who don’t. I drive them where they need to go, and sometimes they tip me. Sometimes they pay me.” His lower lip began to tremble. The ifrit seemed on edge. “One of them shat on the backseat once. I had to clean it before I could take the cab back. How could he do that? I had to clean the wet shit from the seat. Is that right?”
Salim puts out a hand, pats the ifrit’s shoulder. He can feel solid flesh through the wool of the sweater. The ifrit raises his hand from the wheel, rests it on Salim’s hand for a moment.
Salim thinks of the desert then: red sands blow a dust storm through his thoughts, and the scarlet silks of the tents that surrounded the lost city of Ubar flap and billow through his mind.
They drive up Eighth Avenue.
“The old believe. They do not piss into holes, because the Prophet told them that jinn live in holes. They know that the angels throw flaming stars at us when we try to listen to their conversations. But even for the old, when they come to this country we are very, very far away. Back there, I did not have to drive a cab.”
“I am sorry,” says Salim.
“It is a bad time,” says the driver. “A stomris coming. It scares me. I would do anything to get away.”
The two of them say nothing more on their way back to the hotel.
When Salim gets out of the cab he gives the ifrit a twenty-dollar bill, tells him to keep the change. Then, with a sudden burst of courage, he tells him his room number. The taxi driver says nothing in reply. A young woman clambers into the back of the cab, and it pulls out into the cold and the rain.
Six o’clock in the evening. Salim has not yet written the fax to his brother-in-law. He goes out into the rain, buys himself this night’s kabob and french fries. It has only been a week, but he feels that he is becoming heavier, rounder, softening in this country of New York.
When he comes back to the hotel he is surprised to see the taxi driver standing in the lobby, hands deep in his pockets. He is staring at a display of black-and-white postcards. When he sees Salim he smiles, self-consciously. “I called your room,” he says, “but there was no answer. So I thought I would wait.”
Salim smiles also, and touches the man’s arm. “I am here,” he says.
Together they enter the dim, green-lit elevator, ascend to the fifth floor holding hands. The ifrit asks if he may use Salim’s bathroom. “I feel very dirty,” he says. Salim nods. He sits on the bed, which fills most of the small white room, and listens to the sound of the shower running. Salim takes off his shoes, his socks, and then the rest of his clothes.
The taxi driver comes out of the shower, wet, with a towel wrapped about his midsection. He is not wearing his sunglasses, and in the dim room his eyes burn with scarlet flames.
Salim blinks back tears. “I wish you could see what I see,” he says.