A Most Interesting Encounter

Tonight I was killing time waiting for my bus, and I stopped in a bar to have a drink. I ended up having more than one with a couple of interesting guys I got into a conversation with. But that's not the point of this post. In the course of my conversation, I missed the last bus to my place, and I had to take a taxi. The driver of my cab had a very thick middle eastern accent, so I asked him where he was from. At first, he seemed very defensive that I would ask him this; "I'm an American citizen," he told me. I said I didn't doubt that, but I was just wondering where his homeland was. Tellingly, he responded not with a country, but an ethnicity.

"I'm Kurdish," he said.

Thank goodness for my infatuation with geography. I asked him whether he was from Northern Iraq or Southern Turkey. He seemed very impressed that I actually knew about Kurds, and said he was from a small town in Iraq near the Turkish border. Apparently, he came to the U.S. right out of high school in 1982.

That proceeded a very interesting discussion where we talked about the current war in Iraq and what life must have been like under Saddam Hussein as a Kurd in the late 70s and early 80s. As a Kurd, he said that he thinks things are better now, especially as the new President of Iraq is a Kurd. But, he lamented the devastation and destruction that is going on at the time. He was a real Kurdish patriot, wondering how 29 million people can't have their own country. It was just a fascinating experience.

These are the moments you remember. The people you talk to in taxis and whatnot, learning where they are from and the things that mean a lot to them. I had a similar discussion in Austin with a taxi driver from Cameroon. It sticks with you.