Melissa is a twenty-nine year old lady who hasn’t figured out what to do with her life yet. Growing up, whenever she was asked what was that one thing she wanted to do when she’s older, she has always copied her sister or best friend, or made up some job that would certainly have something to do with her passing whim. Once a grown-up, she’d find herself going from office to another but still not finding that one job that would give her life some sense of purpose and meaning. After many unsuccessful tries, she decides to take it more seriously and add some sort novelty/adventure to her dull life until she figures out what to do next. She decides to start driving a yellow cab and give it all she’s got, despite her parents disapproval and the risks she’d be taking concerning her being a female cabbie, which is not that common. Melissa relates by then the perilous journey of a yellow-cab driver. I mean, driving a taxi may not be one of the simplest jobs as it may seem. It’s not like in Crazy Taxi 3 where you would drop people off after you’ve caused a huge mess on the road, bumped into whichever solid or moving object that has gotten in your way, arrive late to destination and still get huge tips. No, it’s way far from that. Driving a cab in NYC city is a synonym of being verbally assaulted and humiliated by the obnoxious cops as well as pedestrians, bearing the bad name of recklessly-lunatic fucked up knuckleheaded drivers that car service cabbies have drawn to them, fearing muggers and hoodlums, dealing with the fare-beaters and the drunkards, not to mention putting up with the adrenaline rushes caused by the gridlocks encountered on a daily basis. This was an okay reading as I was expecting something hellishly epic; it was just a kind of testimonial of some memorable experiences of hers, a bunch of rants and many corny scenes she’d be repeating over and over.
There’s that one thing that has moved me through the page though, about how people are quite comfortable with cabbies, making that actual cab as “an impromptu shrink’s office in motion.” I really thought that it wasn’t akin to Morocco where people would tell their life story to a complete stranger, breaking these cabbie-passenger boundaries already, to the point of making the taxi driver feel quite uncomfortable when you don’t duly interact with him. So that is quite comforting. Well, I should say that this book was nice and chilling at the beginning but that was just it. It’s still one that is meant to be a fun-read though, so no regrets.
Whatever Asmaâ Says 