Sleet, Phone and... 
by Mahmoud Saeed

I was done with my shift at 11:30 P.M. Occasionally, I had peered out at the snowfall, but never imagined it would reach 27 inches in eight hours. The temperature hovered around 10 degrees Fahrenheit. I had to scrape the piled snow off my car, but first I had to start the engine to warm it up. I turned the key in the ignition, but the cold night would only allow the engine to cough and splutter and die out. What is one to do in such a harsh blizzard? Why do they not invent a device for predicting breakdowns? But why do I hang my shortcomings on the peg of others? I am a retard; I live in a big country like the U.S. and yet do not carry a mobile phone. Why? Why. Only because I don’t like any one to speech in telephone and drive, walk, and sitting in bus and train, chatting and laughing with out looking to others. I stupid enough to face this problem, which will help me in this moment! The nearest gas station is about half a mile away and I cannot leave the car parked on the street after midnight; the tow trucks are roaming the streets like hungry cats, looking for a prey, catching cars the way cats catch mice. My car will be towed and I will be fined about twice what I make in two days.

 

I have to run to call the repair company and perhaps the company’s driver would sympathize with me and give me a ride to the nearest metro station. The buses stop operating after midnight. The metro runs, otherwise there would be no way for me to go home, to flee the bitter cold.

 

Panting, I put half a dollar in the public pay phone at the gas station. A recorded female voice said, “If you speak English pres 1, if you speak Spanish pres 2.” I pressed 1. “If you know the extension of the department you need to reach, enter it now, and otherwise press 2…” I pressed 2. “If the car needs body shop press 1, but if the problem is mechanical press 2…” I pressed2. The fifty cents was used up. I put all the coins I had on me, three quarters, so that my call does not get interrupted again.

I was punching the numbers, with my eyes riveted on the street. Of course I could not see my car, but the neighborhood was not safe—I could easily be killed, but the gangster who would kill me would be surprised to find only a twenty dollar bill in my wallet.

 

The snow was getting deeper by the minute, oblivious to our armies of salt trucks roaming the streets around the clock. Finally, the voice over the phone reached the point where it was interrupted, “If the vehicle is a big truck press 1, a pick-up press 2, an SUV press 3, a sedan press 4…” I pressed 4. The money was used up.

 

I rushed inside the station. An old

Indian man with a henna dyed beard opened his eyes. I gave him a five-dollar bill to break and exchange for coins. I would put them all inside that devilish, greedy machine. I remembered the Koranic verse, “On the day when we say unto hell: Art thou full to the brim and it say: Is there more?” I cursed the phones and those who invented them. I cursed the automatic bloody answering machine system, and its complicated way, how they manage to waist customer time and money. But then again, why do I hand my shortcomings on the peg of others? The old man moved about slowly and counted the coins he had: only four dollars. “That’s fine; give me the money, hurry up,” I said.

 

I ran up to the phone and fed it with all the coins. I was pushing the numbers when two tow trucks zoomed by, shaking the universe with their clamor. One moved north, one west. Thank God my car was south. A third truck loomed up an headed in the direction of the street where my car was parked. I left the handset hanging from the cord still screaming, “Press…” I raced to reach my car before the driver would spot it and tow it. I ran and ran. I was exhausted. I dragged my feet, gasping for breath, and then stopped. No use. I saw my car on the deck of the tow truck, with the snowflakes scattering around it by the strident wind.

 

 

 

 

issue 46 29 June 2009