White Lincoln town cars, navy Crown Victorias, yellow Buick sedans. You see them parked outside Georgetown’s front gates, crossing the Key Bridge, navigating Dupont’s tricky traffic circle and depositing politicians at their Capital Hill offices. Washington D.C. boasts the highest resident-to-taxi cab ratio of any city in the United States, with 88 different, independently operating cab companies. Each of the 7,308 licensed cab operators in the District has a unique story to tell.
A striking percentage of Washington’s taxi drivers are immigrants, often highly educated, who have left war-torn or countries where they had positions of influence only to land themselves in one of America’s most dangerous professions. There are virtually no female cab drivers in the District, a city which consistently rates among the “murder capitals” of the United States. The men who drive here have to confront the reality that their job has the highest percentage of homicide rates of all workplaces. Nationally, there are 26.9 homicides for every 100,000 cabs per year, compared with just 8 for liquor stores, the second most dangerous place of work.
Despite this, most cab drivers have high job satisfaction, citing flexibility, interesting companionship and above all the opportunity to achieve independence through consistent hard work as benefits of their job. These men are much more than ad hoc chauffeurs; many are knowledgeable political junkies, activists, college graduates and seasoned connoisseurs of human nature. They witness daily in their job the increase of xenophobia since 9/11, and they can tell you as well as any sociologist how that tragedy has translated into a broad shift of cultural values. They are well-read and actively cultivate the arts of conversation and humor, skills that can translate directly into increased profits. They often have the opportunity to bend the ear of Washington’s intelligentsia with their political opinions, refined through the dual crucibles of leaving politically unstable homelands and being forced to scrape for a living in this fabled land of opportunity.
One such driver is Samantar, 38, comes from a long line of politically active Somali men. Strikingly tall, self-possessed and articulate, Samantar, who goes by Sam, speaks English, Italian, Somalian, and “a bit” of Arabic. Sam’s great-grandfather was the president of his native country, and his father was a Parliament prime minister and Cabinet secretary who had traveled extensively to Washington as a liaison to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Sam’s family was part of the last civilian government until 1969, when a military group took power by assassinating the president. His father was imprisoned until 1974.
“I was too young to be involved in that conflict politically, but I remember the crisis and the oppression that followed,” he said.
In 1985 his family was able to immigrate to Washington, where his brother had already been living for several years. Sam had received his law degree in Somalia, but he could not practice here because Somalia operates under the Roman legal system, while America uses common law. Since he could not afford the tuition for American law school, Sam instead enrolled at George Mason University, where he received both his bachelor’s and graduate degrees in computer information systems. He puts those degrees to use in his day job working in the information technology field. Sam also works for the Somalian Mission as an intelligence consultant but he says that is as far as his Somalian political links now extend.
“I am no longer involved in that political system; I don’t believe in tribes. I am too Americanized-I believe in democracy,” he said.
Sam has highly developed opinions on how this particular democracy should be run, but he says that he himself would never take an active role in American politics because he dislikes the polarization bred from far left and far right stances. Nevertheless, his past and heritage seem to heavily inform his political perspective.
“I love this country, but I disagree with how President Bush handles and implements his policies. We need a president who is more of an activist for human rights, especially in Third World countries,” he said, growing impassioned. “We need to bring democracy to the Arab world, but by following the Jimmy Carter platform, creating support for a civil society and a free market, not by forceful military action.”
In his four years driving cabs, Sam has found many Washington politicians in his backseat. He said that although he usually gets the autograph of any political celebrities who find their way into his cab, he is far from dumbstruck by their position of power. Like many drivers, he takes advantage of the unique opportunity his job affords him to apprise a captive and influential audience of his personal political beliefs.
“I have debated with many congressman and senators. We might disagree, but we have good and interesting debates,” he said. “I recently got to talk to John Edwards- my favorite.”
Most of Sam’s taxi driving has taken place in the post-9/11 era, and he said that the Washingtonians who come in his cab have had their perceptions altered in one of two very different ways since then. The vast majority, the “educated 80 percent,” he said, saw it as a wake-up call that America needed to pay attention to the rest of the world. Sam also cautioned that Americans need to compare American media coverage with international sources.
“I hope to educate people in America to understand that foreign policy is important. You must know what is going on internationally before you make a judgment.”
Sam claims that this attitude is far more problematic for the second, much smaller group, which has reacted to 9/11 with less tolerant sentiments. This group, he believes, is more representative of America as a whole, outside the multi-cultural and open-minded climate of a large city such as Washington D.C.
“Sometimes when I ask people why they believe something, they don’t really know why, they just know what they learned from Fox News,” he said, sounding a little defeated. “You have to learn to just disregard their ignorance and educate. But sometimes explaining to them is difficult and it is better to just be silent.”
Despite this, Sam loves his adopted country. He came here with just 100 dollars and today owns two properties and holds two degrees. Sam said that he got this exponential return on his investment through hardwork and honesty, two qualities he called the embodiment of the “American Dream.” He wants the youth of America, who have grown up with all the advantages an immigrant has to work so hard to achieve, to understand the responsibility that comes along with their position the global arena.
“These young people must focus on the domestic and the international. They are the future generations leading our nation, but America needs the world and the world needs America.”
Like Sam, Bemnet emigrated from Africa as a teenager. Now 31, he left his native Ethiopia as a refugee in 1990, fleeing because his family’s ties with the separatist movement had elicited death threats from the central government. Bemnet was smuggled on a truck across the border to Kenya. Since he was just 16, Bemnet’s case was given priority by the Kenyan government, and he was able to leave for New York City. There, he was reunited with his brother, who had escaped through the Sudan, and they soon moved down the coast to Washington D.C. Although his parents were under close surveillance at the time and unable to leave, in 2001 they finally immigrated here and rejoined their children.
Bemnet completed his senior year of high school at Woodrow Wilson High, then got his associate’s degree from Montgomery College. In 2003, after taking night classes on information systems, he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland.
About seven years ago, he began driving cabs to supplement his part time job in real estate. He says that on the days when he drives, he will be in the cab for a minimum of 10 hours and make about $15 per hour. The business is competitive-the number of cab companies has doubled in the brief period that Bemnet has been driving-but he still says it’s a great job to have.
“I love driving. I’ve learned to be more talkative-Americans have that effect,” he said, laughing. “And I read Art Buchwald in the Washington Post to increase my humor skills. Americans love that too.”
Bemnet has become a seasoned cultural observer in his years driving, but he wasn’t always such an expert on the American lifestyle. He gleefully tells the story of his airplane flight from New York to D.C. shortly after immigrating. He was frustrated that the only refreshment he was offered was coffee, which he hated and refused. Instead, he drank four or five of the creamers that accompanied it, much to the astonishment of the stewardess. Learning to drive was also a cultural shock for him, since his native Ethiopia did not have a developed road system. He said that many Americans underestimate the difficulty of learning an entirely new culture.
“Most people who come are here for money, not happiness. If you travel this far, you are very goal-oriented. I know a man who was a prominent general in Ethiopa who now drives cabs here. The former ambassador to China works for a limo service in D.C,” he said. “Some people think immigrant drivers are dumb, and they’ll tell me an address five or six times because I have an accent. If I told them something in my language, though, they probably wouldn’t understand it.”
Bemnet said that he is often mistaken for someone of Middle-Eastern descent, and since 9/11 he has seen a shift in attitudes towards him because of it.
“People are more superficially prejudiced now. I look like a Muslim, but I am a Christian. I see no reason to talk about my religion though while I’m driving,” he explained. “Even if they seem prejudiced, they sometimes tip more because of the way that they treated me.”
Bemnet has a brother in the Marines, and displays a sign supporting him on the side of his window. He said that some people (usually the same ones who assume he is Muslim) seem befuddled, and others are hostile, launching polemics against Bush and the military. Speaking of his brother, Bemnet said that he simply trusts in God to protect his brother, just as he believes God protects him in his own dangerous job. However, Bemnet said that he is as careful as he can be to ensure that God doesn’t have to step in all that often. Indeed, he seems to have picked up some of the same profiling tactics he resents in those who jump to conclusions about his ethnicity.
“I try to profile. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I do it,” he explained. “I won’t pick up white kids who look like they are drunk, or sometimes young black guys who are going to a bad area. You are always thinking, studying faces, but the real criminal can fool me. I’ve had the nicest, most talkative people run out of the cab without paying.”
Bemnet also said that there are certain generalizations one can make about who will tip well, citing a Princeton University study that says men tip better than women, and native English speakers receive better tips than drivers with accents. He compared his tipping experiences to his impressions of America as a whole.
“Sometimes it lives up to expectations, and sometimes it disappoints,” he said, neatly summing up the inherent dichotomy of the immigrant experience.
Another immigrant driver is Chaubhry, 26, a native of Pakistan who moved here in 2000. Dressed fashionably in jeans and a navy striped button-down, he is friendly but a little guarded, perhaps less garrulous than many of his fellow drivers. Though he was a law student before his emigration, fluent in English, Urdu and Hindi, here, in addition to driving cabs at night, he works at Papa John’s and Armand’s Pizza. His parents left troubled Pakistan first, opening a laundry service in Saudi Arabia before settling in Arlington, VA, where they run a grocery store and gas station. Chaubhry said that although his parents initially arranged for him to come here, he values the independence he garners from working his three jobs.
“I want to make myself stable without any support,” he said. “I don’t like to have any standards imposed on me. This is why I drive cabs, because it is an independent job and I choose my hours.”
This inherent independence is what Chaubhry said first attracted him to America, which he called a “crazy, nice and famous country.” However, in his five years living here, he has come to realize that the land of the free and the brave can be, in fact, a bit of a moral m?lange. Not everything about the American way of life precisely jives with his Pakistani-formed value system.
“I like the maturity that everyone has here,” he allowed. “There is much freedom, but one thing about it is bad. So many guys and girls don’t care about what their parents say. So many just have sex without being ashamed.”
And as for Washington’s most famous export, that peculiar outcropping of democracy known as politics, Chaubhry is not shy in expressing his opinion of it.
“Bullshit,” he said. “All that these people are doing is bullshit. American politicians do not care about other countries.”
These men share little except immigrant status and employment as a cab driver, reflecting the immense variety of personalities and background that are hiding inside those white Lincoln town cars, navy Crown Victorias, and yellow Buick sedans dotting the city’s roadways.
They have all, however, come into contact with a huge cross-section of Washington D.C’s population, most of whom leave the cab without ever so much as asking the name of the man behind the wheel, much less his story. But those who do understand that it is the Chaubhrys, Sams and Bemnets of the city who embody the diverse and conflicted face of America today.
