He works on Vesal-Hejab1 taxi line. He is the only taxi driver whom I guess is my friend now. You must surely know him; he was the instructor at the Faculty of Literature of Tehran University at the beginning of 1990s, the faculty dean who laid the ground for losing his own job for the sake of teaching the works of contemporary poets and writers in his classes and encouraging his students to read more in this area. However, he was not fired; after being summoned and interrogated for a couple of times, he refrained from teaching. As he said, one day he gathered his students around and explained to them that he can no longer bear it, that there is no use in continuing in such a way, then he left the university.
The first time I got in his cab I was astonished at seeing the photo of James Joyce pasted to the front window. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought to myself maybe he was just interested in the photo of Joyce covering one of his eyes like a pirate and in fact he doesn’t know him at all.
The next time A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man resting on the dashboard caught my eyes. It was obvious that he had devoured it many times. His taxi was clean and well-ordered and unlike other taxis there were no stickers or anything dangling from the dashboard, except for the photo of Joyce which was a copy apparently cut from a newspaper or a book. He had silver-grey hair and his hands were dancing on the wheel and gear. He was dancing to Chopin. Chopin was behind the piano and Amir was behind the car wheel, Chopanizing. Instantly I recalled that on the previous ride he was listening to Beethoven and I had guessed that it was coming from the radio.
The ride was always short and there was no chance to talk. I decided to bring one of my translations of Samuel Beckett to him. He was pleased. He said, “excellent, the master’s pupil”.
I said, “The degenerate pupil of the master of course.”
He laughed. I had to get off. Our interactions were always like this; every time a couple of sentences and then finished.
One day he said he was writing a book on Ebrahim Golestan2 and was looking for a publisher. We exchanged phone numbers and I said I’d be glad to help. The book is not finished yet; the work is in progress.