My Driver, Ali

I used to have a driver. His name was Ali.

Ali took me wherever I wanted to go, whenever I wanted him to. The best part was that his services were free. No matter the traffic conditions, distance, or how many times I offered to pay him, my ride was complimentary. And I called him almost daily. This went on for over two years.

Ali was fiercely loyal to me for reasons that I never quite understood. I met him one rainy night during the beginning of my freshman year. My roommates and I were headed to a bar in Georgetown, and we hailed a cab outside of our dorm. It was like any other cab ride, until we heard sirens and saw blue and red lights flashing behind us. A cop car was fast approaching. My first clear memory of Ali is of him panicking. He sharply turned the steering wheel toward the curb and slammed on the brakes.

I can't remember why the cop pulled him over, but it started to seem like a much bigger deal than a busted headlight. Based on Ali's reaction the cab might have been a stolen vehicle. Or he committed the third of some kind of 'three strikes and your out' violation. Perhaps he was involved in a hit and run. Maybe somebody put out an Amber Alert on his plates. Or he could have been the leader of an underground ring of terrorists. Whatever he was guilty of, Ali was shitting his pants.

And then something magical happened. One of my roommates, a very pretty girl who had a striking appearance with jet black hair and a white complexion, rolled down the window. She got the cop's attention, and they started talking. The cop put his elbows on the window frame and leaned all the way in. He was young, probably in his early twenties. He was smitten.
"Will I see you again?" she inquired flirtatiously. She was being very deliberate.
"Here's my card," he replied. "Write down your number for me."
My four other roommates and I exchanged uncomfortable looks, wondering whether cops normally had business cards. I imagined that he did this sort of thing fairly often.
"Sure," she smiled sweetly, "but before I do, I'd love it if you did me a huge favor. I'm not quite sure why you pulled over my friend here, but he's a hardworking guy. He didn't mean to do anything wrong. Would you consider letting him off with a warning for me, just this once?"
The cop mulled it over for all of five seconds. He was kind of an idiot. "Well..."
She wrote her number on the card and gave it back to him. The cop pointed at our driver and muttered something, and then took off.

Ali turned the car back on and turned around, scanned his eyes back and forth across all of us seated in the back, then glanced over to my friend sitting next to him. He turned around to the back again and pointed his finger, looking intensely and directly at my dark haired friend. He spoke in a thick, almost unintelligible Pakistani accent.
"What just happened was by the grace of God. I am eternally grateful for your actions. You are an angel. You saved me."
We were all fidgety and she was even more so. "Look, let's just go. It really wasn't a big deal," she assured him. "We're late."
Ali couldn't be deterred. "Mark my words. From this night on, I will work for you and every single person who witnessed what just happened. I will regret it deeply if I do not get the opportunity to repay you."

He handed out his business card. I started to think that I should have one, with a picture of me, stoned and giggling and sloppily eating an Au Bon Pain chicken caesar wrap with the title MARCIA: COLLEGE FRESHMAN.

My dark haired friend was the first one to hit him up for a solid, which was only fair, after a few days. He showed up exactly on time, and presented her with a box of Chanel Chance perfume. "This is from me and my family," he said.

Under most circumstances I'd presume that there were strings attached to this kind of bizarre arrangement, but he was the sort of guy who kept his word no matter the cost. Although I wondered what it was that he was so afraid of when the cop rapped on his window.

After a while my dark haired friend stopped calling him. I think she felt bad, sensitive to what some may have perceived as her taking advantage of a desperate person. My other friends no longer bothered with him, either. Not me! I remembered that he made the same promise to all of us, and I felt like I had won the lottery. I was going to work this privilege into the ground. I was broke. I made minimum wage as a college bistro waitress under the federal work study program. I lived in an expensive city. I needed rides all the time. This was my golden ticket!

Ali drove me everywhere. He took me to and from my second job at an inner-city elementary school in northeast D.C. He drove me to Union Station, Baltimore, Tyson's Corner, Arlington, Crystal City, Bethesda, College Park, even Newark, NJ. He caught me stuffing a hundred bucks into the crevices of his backseat right before he was about to drop me off at BWI airport, which made him flip out (he made me keep it). He even bought me holiday presents. I in turn presented him with "winter gifts" for his wife and kids because I had no idea what he was into spiritually, although I gathered he didn't celebrate Chanukah. We talked about all kinds of things. We had an unlikely friendship that was both strange and comforting.

One day I called Ali for a ride to the airport. For the first time, he told me that he was preoccupied. He apologized profusely, but said that he was sending someone in his place to come and get me. "Look for a white van with a tall driver," he told me. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, a car pulled up that matched Ali's description. A white van. I wondered if I should be worried, but the driver seemed alright. I hopped in the back.
"You sure you want to sit back there?" my new driver inquired.
"As opposed to what?" I asked.
"Sitting up here next to me," he replied.
"Nah, I'm good...so how do you and Ali know each other?"
The tall driver ignored me. I kept my head turned toward the window. We wound down New York Avenue and around the convention center. He briefly pulled over.
"Sit up here," he instructed.
"Jesus, fine," I relented, thinking that I was supposed to be nice to this pushy louse because he was a friend of my homeboy Ali.
We kept going. Things were starting to look less and less familiar. At first I thought that since this was a different driver, he must have had his own favorite route. But then I started to get a very uneasy feeling.
"Umm... sir? Where are we?" I fixated my eyes on the nearest intersection to read the signs. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Oh no.
He pulled over again. "Get out."
"Wh... Why?" I stammered.
"Leave your things here." He pointed toward the ATM straight ahead. "Clear out the money in your account. I'll be waiting."
I exited and walked toward the bank. I took note of a sticker on the building's front door that read BANK OF AMERICA: ANACOSTIA BRANCH. Oy. Ever heard Dave Chapelle's skit about the 'baby on the corner'? He probably got his inspiration from this area. Fortunately, though, my cell phone was in my pocket. I dialed out to Ali with trembling hands.
"Hey, Ali. Listen, sorry to bother you but this friend of yours is bad news. At first he was trying to get in my pants. Now he's lead me to Southeast and he's trying to rob me. I'm scared, Ali. Help me!"
"I'm on my way. In the meantime, ignore his requests. Just walk back to the car right now and let me talk to him."
What was said next I had no idea, because it was all in Pakistani.  But the tall driver was flailing his arms about and screaming. I got the impression that he had intended to rob a different person. He loudly snapped my flip phone, popped the trunk and chucked my suitcase on the curb. Then he drove off without uttering another word.
I twiddled my thumbs on MLK Boulevard as I waited to be saved. Tk tk tk tk tk, a crackhead scurried past. Where was Ali?
He arrived a half an hour later. He gave me a hug and apologized for all the confusion.
"Sorry about my associate. He's an asshole."
I rolled my eyes. "Clearly."

That wasn't the last time I saw Ali, but it was near to it. This unfortunate rendezvous with his 'associate' made me wonder what kind of a person Ali really was. It was apparent that my congenial driver was involved in some pretty sordid after-hours dealings. I was willing to look the other way to keep getting free rides, but somehow we lost touch. I thought about what other types of convenient friends I should make. At that point in my life, a cop would have been useful.