To the Airport

Amid the fumy, head-pounding traffic, on the other side of the glass, upside down almost, a tangle-haired, grinning face. Hand making a winding signal. What was he saying?
She reached for the button, depressed it. Nothing happened.

‘Don’t look at him,’ the driver said. ‘Look in front, please.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t make eye contact.’ She saw only his dark glasses in the rear-view mirror. He had his hand on the master switch, preventing her from opening the window.

‘It’s just a boy,’ she said. ‘Is he selling something?’

‘No boy. Bad man,’ the driver said. He revved the engine, jerked the car half a foot forward. The lights stayed red. Horns blasted around them. The boy slipped. She thought he was going under the wheel.

‘Careful!’ she yelled at the driver.

The lights changed. The car shot forward, crunching over potholes, braked, moved again. The boy was gone. She felt sick. The last twenty minutes had been like this. Crowds spilling off the pavements at every junction; trucks, scooters and cars jostling for space on the hot tarmac. Engines backfiring, she hoped.

She saw the white silhouette of an aeroplane on a blue road sign.

‘Don’t worry, soon be out of here,’ the driver said, but the set of his mouth was not reassuring. It was the mouth of a man who hated everything outside his car – the other vehicles, their drivers, the road surface, the beggars, kids on the make, women under their huge loads, women selling fruit, selling themselves. Most of all he hated the flurries and eddies of young men, smiling till you denied them, then suddenly banging on your roof, shaking fists at your windscreen, yelling abuse in whichever of five languages they thought matched the look of your passengers.

And she knew all this. She’d been warned often enough. If she’d let the window down a crack, the boy’s fingers, his hand, his whole upper body would have been inside in seconds. The grin would have vanished. He wouldn’t have been a boy any more. He hated her, wanted everything she had, whatever it was.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She clutched her bag. All she wanted was to be some- where else.