Another Post About Work

Haji (*not his real name, see below) was in my office yesterday, a Yemeni immigrant who after following several other flawed forms of the American dream – factory work, selling used cars on the side without a license, etc. – has finally fallen into the vocation of over-the-road truck driver.



To speak to him, you have to use a sort of hybridized language; part Arabic, part English, with lots of gestures and pointing and so on, and always with a large piece of scrap paper on the counter to chart out what I’m explaining to him.


There is tremendous fun in seeing him, now. Truthfully it isn’t because of anything that's happened recently, but rather that I see him so seldom now that helping him has gone back to being fun and amusing, rather than annoying or excruciating.


When he used to come in all the time -- several years ago – you never knew what sort of scheme he was working on next, and every time he would come into my office, he’d bring in the most complicated questions about automobile paperwork; vehicle titles from other states, odometer statements that were incorrect, how to get around having to pay tax in buying a vehicle in order to resell it – all questions that would seem more interesting if you didn’t have to work through the headaches of a language barrier and dealing with a person you weren’t quite sure you trusted.


But now is different. Again, because he’s in so seldom, I guess, and also because now that he has regular employment, his questions are much more routine. He isn’t trying to scheme anybody. He's stopped buying and selling used cars under the table because that pays peanuts compared to what you can make as a truck driver.


In an odd way, he’s been a jewel to get to know. It restores your faith in humanity to meet somebody like him, not because he’s honest, or trustworthy, or a spiritual person. He’s not really any of those things.



Rather, he’s from such a different ethnicity that it makes you feel better, somehow, to know that he doesn’t have some hyper-radical magnetic attraction to his religion, no ultra-nationalist pride toward his home country. No dreams of strapping a bomb to his chest to make a statement and
become a martyr for his people.


In other words, he is quite normal, especially by American standards. And boring. It’s refreshing to meet someone so foreign, yet so average. So different, yet still familiar.


“John, what I going to do?” he’s asking me as we look over a sort of flow chart he’s written out on the counter, a representation of what it will take to complete 2 vehicle transactions – which will actually, because he doesn’t have the proper documentation, turn into 4 transactions.

And so I explain. And after meticulous pointing with a pen, arrows and loops on the paper, lists of how much each step will cost, he finally has it.

I give him the total amount of money he needs to bring, and he ends the conversation the way he always does, in his Arabic accent using what little American language he knows, always full of exaggerated confidence:

“You gaaahhht it. “

And that is Haji.