I.
Colin, a cabbie in London, volunteers, “I’ve just been to Cuba.”

“I can see you have a tan,” I reply.

“I went to sort my life out. And I ended up falling in love.”

Her name is Sabena, from Vienna, and she has changed him. “I used to be a player. You know what that is?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Well, not any more. I don’t want no one else. She’s the only one I want now.”

“How wonderful for you.”

A few silent minutes go by. He then hands me his mobile phone. “She’s just sent me a text message.” It reads Smile – someone is thinking of you.

“That’s sweet,” I say. This encourages a three-minute exchange on the wonders of text messaging.

He hands me the phone again – there is a message reading Too much masturbation causes hallucination. Every other letter is flashing. “Ha ha. She must have a sense of humor, too,” I say.

“That one’s from my son.”


II.
Emily and I are on our way to the airport. She asks Na’im, our cab driver, where he is from. “Egypt.” Beat. “I am going home in fifteen days.”

“You must be very excited,” Emily says.

“I have to go back to the army. They are preparing for war with Israel. If I don’t go, they will take my brother instead.”

Na’im has to leave his wife Heidi, an American Jew, behind. She will give birth to their daughter in six weeks. They will give her a name that exists in both Hebrew and Arabic.


III.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” My seatmate on the flight home, maybe fifty, shows me an engagement ring.

I know nothing about jewelry, but I can tell it is cheap – the stones are minuscule, the metal dull. “It’s beautiful,” I say, and try to avoid further awkwardness by burying my face in a book.

Undeterred, she tells me how she, Judy from Lane, Oklahoma, met Dave, a bus driver from Swindon, England on the internet. She traveled over to meet him, fell in love, and got engaged.

She can’t resist telling me that Dave is cheap. “He’s got a good heart, though. Over there, they don’t raise them to hit you or anything.” She pounds one fist into the other palm in illustration.

“Well, he’s got a good heart, that’s the important thing,” I venture.

“He really is cheap, though.”