BAD NEWS FROM HOME

By Adam Dunn

This is the third in a Cobrapost series on South Asian taxi drivers in New York.

The taxicab idles next to a handy fire hydrant, while the two men who own it sit in the front seat going through the quiet ritual of Shift Change.

The cab is fairly typical of its breed, a 2002 Ford Crown Victoria with over 200,000 miles on it. It is painted Taxi Yellow, a factory color owned by the Ford Motor Company. The paint job is coated with the faint city grime that never quite washes off but somehow becomes invisible under streetlights.

The driver’s-side door opens.

Meet Javaid Tariq.

Javaid is a slight, middle-aged man with a ponytail and earrings who cups his Marlboros carefully against the wind. He looks like he might be cast as a buccaneer or musician in a film. When he wears his reading glasses to go over his trip sheet with his partner, he looks like a college professor; with his sunglasses on, he looks like a South Asian Willie Nelson.

Javaid, 49, hails from Pakpattan, in Pakistani Punjab. He has been driving a taxi in New York City for eleven years. He shares his cab with a partner who requires thrice-weekly dialysis; renal problems, says Javaid, as well as hemorrhoids and bladder infections, are common ailments for taxi drivers.

Tonight he is discussing what must be on many cab drivers’ minds: the recent earthquake in Pakistan. Over 60% of the taxi fleet’s drivers are South Asian (mainly from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India, although no figures are available on the percentages of each in the fleet’s makeup). “There is no dedicated hotline to that area,” he replies when questioned about how drivers might check on their loved ones in the quake zone. “The only way is to call relatives and friends in Pakistan to see who is alive and who is dead.” He points out that the two Pakistani cable channels in NYC, Geo and ARY continuously broadcast earthquake updates. “The Pakistani Embassy is taking donations for the President’s Fund, Pakistan Airlines has offered to carry donated food and medicine free.

The unprecedented scale of the disaster has even overwhelmed the deadly rivalry between India and Pakistan, at least temporarily. The militaries of both nations have been mobilized for the relief effort, and have been working side by side, and there has been talk of opening the LoC for relief efforts ahead of the approaching winter. This is about the only good piece of news in the flood of the other kind. “I think it’s a very good moment between the countries,” Javaid says.

As with all immigrant groups in the U.S., Western Union is alive and well. Cash donations, he says, are encouraged—with the attendant pitfalls. “Not all the money will reach the victims,” he says matter-of-factly, adding that his preferred charity organization is the Edhi Foundation for disaster relief. Wire transfers, Moneygrams, and even cash donations at Pakistani stores around the city (transmitted via the cable channel hotlines) have been steadily streaming from Pakistani and Kashmiri enclaves such as Midwood in Brooklyn. (According to the Pakistani Embassy’s website, to date, nearly $1.8 million has been donated, with about $1.5 million transferred, and over $280,000 in transit.)

Going home to check on one’s relatives, Javaid explains, is simply not an option for most drivers. “You need a fourteen or fifteen hundred-dollar air ticket,” he says, and the majority of drivers simply cannot afford to make the trip. Also, there is the not-so-small matter of the drivers’ lease contracts. “If they go back to Pakistan, who’s going to drive their cab here? If they’re not making their lease and car payments, they’ll lose their cabs to their brokers, then be sued in Small Claims Court. Also, some drivers are still in the process of getting their green cards, which makes it difficult to get permission from the INS to go back,” he says. It’s not always easy to get a new partner on the spur of the moment, let alone one who lives in your neighborhood and can bring the cab back for shift change. “Every cab driver wants their partner in their neighborhood. It makes it easy to change. If one partner lives in the Bronx and the other lives in Queens, that partnership won’t go well.” He adds that there has not been a sympathetic word from either the TLC [the Taxi and Limousine Commission] or the Mayor’s office regarding the earthquake. “They could ask the garage owners not to take cabs from drivers who need to check on their families, or create some kind of fund to cover lease payments or for airfare. We did not hear anything from them.

“I read in a Pakistani newspaper yesterday that some Pakistanis living both here and in Canada have lost their entire families,” he continues. “I’m in touch with relatives and friends back home almost every day. The news says that there are 38,000 deaths. But I called a friend with a seventh-floor apartment in Islamabad, and the building next door to his collapsed, killing 300 people alone.” Even mortality, it seems, is relative.