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chariots, or the Mohammedan invaders without their hunchbacked servants, those magnificent porters of dates, swords, water, and goat’s milk! If it hadn’t been for the services of the camel, the defeated Byzantines would still be arguing and trying to determine the sex of angels while complimenting themselves on the intact orifice of Mary.
    In my car, I hide an elaborate feather duster and a screwdriver. I leave the feather duster under my seat and the screwdriver at my side.
    You see, I took the advice of my friend Mamadou, the Senegalese Spider who hangs out at Café Bolero. He said to me once, Never carry a gun, and don’t carry a knife either. Carry a thick stick with ostrich feathers on top, to keep away the filth and the troubled, and a screwdriver to stab with when needed. That way, the police can’t accuse you of violent intent. You can always claim that you were defending yourself with whatever happened to be lying around.
    Still, I drove for years without carrying either, until my car started to collect dust and fall apart, everything started to rattle and shake, and I feared that the mirrors would fall off and the doors would swing open and the very poor would come in and beg for a free ride.
    Like the homeless man I picked up once, on a night when the cold was so cold and the streets were desolate. The man looked as if he was going to collapse. He stood in front of my car, oblivious to the traffic, and the light changed over his shoulder and made him look like a glowing saint. He laid all his plastic bags in the middle of the road, raised his arms like Jesus, and begged me to take him in. I rolled down the window. He approached me and said: There, and pointed to the sky behind him, I am not going far, please, have pity on my old bones. It is cold, I have no money for the bus and I am hungry, I have to get to the shelter, they are serving soup.
    I let him in. He sat in the front. He piled the bags on his lap and they covered the dashboard and crossed his seat’s border onto mine. He had the smell of the destitute, and he talked about God and his angels. He said he had seen them that night.
    Who, I asked.
    The angels, he said, the angels. And he started to talk, and his lips flapped against each other like featherless wings, describing angels that land on a strip beside the river. His big black garbage bags rattled with empty cans, as if they were full of trapped devils and snakes. I dropped him under the bridge. He got out and immediately started to run, shouting, I will pray for you, I will pray for you, and his bags bounced off his rushing heels.
    Minutes later, when I was making change for a client, I found that the man who had promised me prayers must have slipped his hand out from under his bags and stolen my cash. And the client, who had been telling me all about his kid’s school and his wife, and who had been complaining about the high crime rate in this city, now started to go on about taxi drivers and how they never have change. I think you do it on purpose, the man said, you get a bigger tip that way.
    Suspicious, I thought, people are suspicious, inconsiderate citizens.
    They all come with large bills. They press them over our shoulders and wave them with a rich man’s pride. They get all our change and we get tired of aligning our windows with those of our fellow drivers, flashing fifties at red lights, calling, Brother, do you have change, and we resent stopping at gas stations and buying candy bars to break bills and gain the right to wash our faces in dim, filthy bathrooms with curled toilet paper carpeting the wet floors like morning confetti in the aftermath of carnivals and fairs.
    Another time, I picked up a skinny lad who wanted to go to the Garage nightclub. I knew that club. I’d been there once, but that is another story. He shivered and talked and shivered and sniffed. And when I looked in my rearview mirror again, I couldn’t see him: I thought he had disappeared right in front of