Heard this old song by Freddie Mercury on the radio, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," said to take a long ride on a motor-bike, and hitch-hike, so I did ...
Yeah, 4 am in Berlin, waitin' for the morning train to go to Ani's show. All true. Impatient. Bad time to hitch-hike 'cuz it's, um, 4 in the mourn and it's raining.
So I go, "Yeah, it's the perfect time to hitch-hike!" Walk around the corner to the all-night gas station, and I had this premonition the whole time (really true) that I gotta say I'm going to Hannover (next big city over) because to say that I'm going to Bonn/Cologne is too far (to imagine) and anyway it's, um, 4 in the morning and it's RAINING!
So I walk around the corner and see this guy smoking a ciggie in a taxi, with - you guessed it - Hannover plates! Well, there he is, thought I ... Perfect timing. And I walked up and asked if it was possible that he had just driven from Hannover to Berlin and now he had to drive back to Hannover (I was right) and if I could perhaps join him. And then came this amazing moment, this decade-long pause in which he stared me up and down, had he been a scanner in fact I would be his scanned material, I felt like a very official document at that moment. But then his face broke into a smile and he said, "OK - hope in!" And the next 3 hours were nothing but pure magic as we traded stories and smoked ciggies together (sorry mom) and he drove and I sang. "I am from Persia," he said in rough German, but with a smile. An hour later, after we had really, truly officially become friends, he told me the actual name of his homeland:
Iran.
Wow. Here we are, I thought, cruising along in this taxi that normally would've cost at least 300 bucks, money matters not, and he's thrilled to death to meet an American who isn't a complete idiot, and I am just tickled pink to have a ride to Hannover, just as I imagined it, and be with a fellow who is so smart (and a very good driver, too!) on the Autobahn where you can drive as fast as you want, even when it's 5:30 in the morning and it's raining!
And we listened to Ottmar Liebert play the classical guitar on a brand-new German stereo system, all the while talking about Iran and America. Very Calico! And he uttered/muttered that the boys back home (in my country) don't really understand what they've done, 'cuz the Arabian lands, he said, will not forget this, um, conflict that we've started for the next 200 years ... Ugh.
So I've absolutely NO COMMENT to that one, friends, except that maybe we should take a few moments and think about it all ...
And he was honestly one of the nicest, purest, mo' smartist guys I've ever met. Later he played me some new-fangled Iranian rock music that sounded really good. I asked him what the text was, and he translated it, basically as, "When you see a bird that has broken free from it's cage, think of me ..."
And it's all true, this story, and I say again that the universe is quite amazing, that an American and a Persian can sit quietly together for hours on end and cover everything under the sun, and hang out, despite ALL ODDS being against it. And at exactly 7 am he dropped me off at another gas station in Hannover, and in 4 hours I was in Bonn ...
He only said one word in english the whole time, and it was, "Unforgettable." Yeahhh ...
True stories from the road.
Peace. -Todd
Posted by calico at November 15, 2004 01:35 AM