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drop off.”
    “You never told me where you and your family are living,” he reminded me.
    “They’ll be staying at a Manhattan hotel while I am away,” I said, eluding him.
    Mr. Ghazzali maneuvered around the double-parked cars but had to hit the brakes when he reached a triple-parked car. The Impala was in the middle of the street blocking any passage left, right, or straight. There was no driver seated in the vehicle.
    “I lost a good driver from the Ivory Coast this way,” he said, sitting behind the parked car without honking or cursing. “My driver leaned on his horn on one of these Bronx streets where people park like they’re crazy. Some sixteen-year-old kid without a driver’s license or insurance ran downstairs and shot him dead for blowing the horn too loud. The kid jumps in the car and speeds away, leaving my driver’s bloody body behind. A valuable life lost for no reason. This is what I have been trying to say to you, young brother. You don’t need to explain to me what you want out of life or how you want your mother and sister treated. We are Muslim. We are Sudanese. We both understand and want the exact same things. It’s these animals out here,” he said, pointing to the people lingering on the block. “It’s them who don’t understand or care. They got no God, no boundaries, no limits, no respect for life.”
    Just then a man dashed out of the building shirtless, jumped in the car that was blocking us, and peeled off, no acknowledgment or apology, straight New York ghetto style. Mr. Ghazzali waited five seconds and then drove on.
    “So you need someone to make sure that your mother and sister are secured. You need a driver who will go inside if he doesn’t see them waiting where they are supposed to be, and someone who will not pull off before they get inside safely at night.”
    “Yes, Ahki,” I answered, appreciating not having to exchange too many words about a simple but important plan.
    “And the reason they are staying in a hotel instead of with their new friends is—?” he asked, checking my face and quickly moving his eyes back to the road.
    “I don’t want to burden you with my family. I just wanted to hire your car service because I would feel more comfortable knowing and trusting the person who is transporting my mother and sister. I can pay for the whole thing in advance. I don’t know exactly how many days I will be gone, but I’m trying to keep it under one week.”
    Mr. Ghazzali pulled over. “Get out,” he said calmly.
    His command threw me off for a second. Then I reached for the handle and opened the taxi door. With one foot in the cab and the other on the curb, I pulled out a small stack of bills and peeled off a five to pay him for taking up a brief time in his cab. He didn’t move to accept it. I thought maybe it was not enough and that somehowthe small amount had insulted him. So quickly I peeled off a ten and extended my arm again.
    “I don’t know the story of your life, young brother. But I can see that there are no friends in your world. You say you want someone who you can trust, yet you trust no one. No man can do his time alone on this earth. This is why we have the Muslim brotherhood. I invited you to our mosque, yet you haven’t shown your face there at Jumma prayer. Is there anything that unites you and me other than this paper money?” he asked me with a stern stare at the measly ten dollars.
    I went deep inside my own mind. My father had everything—land, an estate, money, power, family, and friends. In fact, the Muslim brotherhood met on our property, men bent in daily prayer at our mosque, whose children attended the madrassa at our estate, whose wives worked and entertained with my mother. But something did go wrong. And it went wrong enough for me to be standing in the streets of the BX and living in the projects of Brooklyn and grinding on American soil, not the rich earth of the Sudan, where I, my mother and father and father’s