Remembering

The traffic lights turn red,

And I, the busy man I pretend to be

Look beyond my excel sheet

On the taxi driver in front of me

 

A dark-skinned man, he had a smile,

A kind of glow on his happy face,

That kind of glow not met by needs,

But by the peacefulness of the everydays

 

And yet, beneath, the veneer of smile,

Melancholy floated in forlorn eyes,

Time aside, that watery depth

That comes with pain, that makes us wise

 

A chit chat here - my laptop shuts

(The glow he had also boomed in his voice)

‘Where are you from?’ I had to ask

‘Sudan,’ he replied, ‘War, sir, I had no choice’

 

That familiar tale that doesn’t change

No matter how much time is wound up past –

The wounds will heal, the clots will dry

But the scars and pain will us, outlast

‘Khartoum?’ I ask – he’s lit with a grin

(It was the only city my geography knew)

But here, his past drew empty looks,

And he had respect for the informed few

 

It seemed to open up the walls of his heart,

And he talked of bullets, the cuts of war

‘Yet, can you ever forget your motherland Sir?

She calls you more now you’ve come this far’

 

‘But life is kind - there is hope and dreams,

And you can choose to be deaf of the war faraway;’

Silence, saudade, ‘And yet inside

The past keeps waiting for a yesterday.’

 

‘You may find it strange but I remind my son,’

Of the war, the deaths, the pain and the shame,

He need not know, but he needs to know

The torn-up past, from where he came.’

 

The car stops, I faintly smile –

Will we remember the lessons he learned?

I find hope in his eyes, in that innocent smile -

The lamp that glows is also burned

 

I pay my fare when the radio comes ‘live -

Another war somewhere that couldn’t wait,

Two helpless eyes, and he speaks with a choke,

‘We must go on, but we cannot forget…’

 

Inspired by a real-life conversation I once had with a taxi driver who had immigrated from war-torn Sudan