I tend to think of myself as a city person, but that is not entirely true. City people take cabs or an Uber. I don’t. I have averaged perhaps one such ride a year in my big-city life, but on a recent day I found myself taking three Uber trips in the span of four hours.
The NBP also seldom rides in cars-for-hire, but he got the first Uber of the day and accompanied me. That efficient driver played what is now called the American songbook on his radio, and I recognized most of the music. Only as we approached our Manhattan destination did he speak. He addressed me and asked if I enjoyed the music, and I politely responded that I had. He said that he thought that someone of his generation would like it and that was why it was on. I said that I was surely of an older era than he, but then he said that he was born in 1947. I was surprised that at his age he was an Uber driver but did not say that. Instead I asked where he was from originally. His initial response was Israel and then added that he had been born in Egypt. He said that the Jews had been expelled from Egypt in the 1950s, something I did not know. He continued by saying that he had come to America in the 1970s. Pleased that I had liked his music, he made sure to tell me how I could get similar music, which started by asking if I had Pandora. I do not and said what was technically true, that I could get it. He showed me a list of channels that I apparently could subscribe to. (I like Johnny Mathis, but a Johnny Mathis channel seemed a bit much.) If I had known him longer, I might have had many questions for him. He left Egypt before he was ten. Did he feel Jewish then? Did he live a segregated life in Egypt? Who did he play with? What were his first reactions to Israel? What did his parents do? Why did he move to the states? What work had he done in this country? Why in his seventies was he driving an Uber? And many more if I had had a conversation with what seemed like a nice, interesting guy.
The NBP got us another Uber to go back home. This driver, perhaps around 60, seemed to be a native American and wanted to talk. We quickly settled on sports. His favorite teams were different from mine, but I know a little about a lot of things, and I was able to keep the conversation flowing. He said that he and his wife shared their one television, and he did not watch Sunday football at home because that was her TV time. He said that he lived in the Village, which is generally considered an expensive part of Manhattan, and I would have liked to learn more about how he managed to live there. He said that he had neighbors who contracted him to drive them to the Berkshires, a trip of around 100 miles. Our driver clearly loved the Massachusetts mountains and talked about their beauty, although he said that before GPS, he often had trouble finding his way back. I wondered, but did not ask, how much his neighbors paid for this service.
A few hours later I had to go back to Manhattan, and the NBP was not available. So for the first time in my life I ordered an Uber. I found that with only a few swear words even I could do that. This driver’s first name was Muktar, and we drove in silence for half the trip until a truck, for no discernible reason, did a three-point turn in front of us, blocking our vehicle. I heard “Unbelievable” from the driver, and while we waited, we started talking. I asked where he was from: “Sierra Leone. West Africa.” I am glad to have refrained from asking how he had learned his excellent English because I later learned that English is the official language of his home country. (I had asked the American-Israeli-Egyptian driver of a few hours before when and where he learned his excellent English. He said only when he came to America, which meant he did not speak the language before he was twenty-five.)
Perhaps I might have assumed the driver was Muslim because he was from Sierra Leone, but that would not have been an entirely safe assumption. I later learned that Christians comprise twenty percent of that country’s population. Nevertheless, I deduced that he was a Muslim when I first got in the car because I saw on the back of the front seat a rack containing three copies of the Qur’an inked with “Free” across the top of the pages. I was amused by a coincidence. At a stoplight I showed him the book I had been reading, The Islamic Jesus: How the Kings of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims, by Mustafa Akyol. The book taught me that Jesus is an important figure in Islam, as was his mother Mary, who has a book or a chapter in the Koran named after her. Jesus is directly or indirectly mentioned over one hundred times in the Muslim Holy Book, which records his birth to a virgin after a heavenly annunciation and his performance of miracles. Akyol taught me that Jesus is regarded as a or the Messiah in Islam, but that only meant that he brought forth a special heavenly message to restore the true religion to its original, moral message, not that he was divine or part of the Godhead.
When the driver read the title of my reading material, he, without showing any arrogant pride in his knowledge of the Qur’an, started telling me about the Koranic passages about Jesus and Mary. I listened, pleased that it coincided with and affirmed what I had been reading. We chatted a bit about religion, and as we got closer to our destination, I said that I could never be a Muslim. Before he could ask, I said that there was no way that I was going to pray every day thirty minutes before dawn. I could see his smile in the rear-view mirror, and he said that there was a great power in the group prayers that enhanced a spiritual feeling. He asked if I also would object to fasting, and I replied that while it must be hard, I thought I could do that and find it beneficial. But as we neared the destination, I said that pre-dawn prayer was a deal breaker, and if Muhammad commanded that, he was just wrong. Muktar caught my eye and laughed.
We arrived at the hospital, and I said that I was going to the emergency room in hopes that they could save my life. He gave me warm wishes.
