Nabir, a car service driver in Brooklyn skidding and stopping through a blinding snowstorm

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Nabir, a car service driver in Brooklyn skidding and stopping through a blinding snowstorm

Passenger:

Where are you from?

Car Service Driver:

Yemen

Passenger:

Yemen? Oh.

Driver:

You know something about Yemen?

Passenger:

I was working on Somalia for a while and a lot of Somalis went to Yemen as refugees. How is it in Yemen right now?

Driver:

It was bad when the Somalis came, and now it is getting worse.

Passenger:

Why?

Driver:

The southerners are trying to start a war.

Passenger:

Why? Are they part of some different tribe?

Driver:

They used to be a separate territory.

Passenger:

And why are you in New York? Isn't it cold here for you?

Driver:

For the first year it was. Now it is normal.

Passenger:

But don't you miss your country? Is it really that bad that you have to live here in this freezing place?

Driver:

Every day, it is bad. There, you have only two people who can make enough money to support five, maybe more family members. Mother, father.

Passenger:

So here you make more money and can support them better?

Driver:

Yes, of course.

Passenger:

But why do you have to support them? Why don't you just tell them to support themselves?

Driver:

Partly because of religion, partly because of family.

Passenger:

But your parents, they are older than you, they have much more experience with life, shouldn't they be making more money than you?

Driver:

Silence

Passenger:

Do you still think all the time about Yemen, I mean, do you feel like you still live there in your head even though you live so far away?

Driver:

A person never stops thinking about their own country. The first year...now it is different after four years.

Passenger:

Why do you keep caring? There are many people - in warzones, and in peacefull places - who only think about themselves and their own business. They only think about the situation of their country when something happens to them. But there isn't something happening all the time, even in a war, it is only sometimes that the war affects you...most of the other time it is just normal, life is like usual. Do you think you are unusual for paying enough attention to the problem that you had to leave your country to come here and get away from it?

Driver:

A person must care. If he doesn't, he is not his....self. He is not part of the earth. If a person is one of those people who only thinks about his own business, he is not caring about anyone but his own self, he is not caring about his country. He is not part of his country. His country...means nothing to him.

Posted on December 20, 2009

Brooklyn Cares

Nabir, a car service driver in Brooklyn skidding and stopping through a blinding snowstorm