No way, she’s not American

Tagged as: Iran taxis
Got into a taxi. The driver was speaking funny English to me: “Where from?”

“America.”

“Amrika! Bah bah!”

The four men in the cab started laughing and talking amongst each other. They are thrilled to have an American in their midst. The guy in front is telling the others that I am not really American. “One of her parents must be Iranian. Americans don’t come to Iran.” He doesn’t realize that I speak Persian.

“No, no her husband is Iranian. I am sure.”

The guy up front persists. “No she is maybe English or German.”

“He doesn’t think I am American, does he?”

The driver laughs. “We told him your husband is Iranian.”

The driver begins to sing. The passengers are now discussing Condoleza Rice. “She is funny,” says the guy up front. (Funny=ba namak, which is literally “with salt”)

“No, she is sour,” the driver says. Works better in Persian.

“Now that one before her…”

“Powell?”

“No the big woman. What was her name?”

“Albright,” offers a passenger.

“She’s a woman to love. Big, beautiful. Like me.” The driver is big, tall, and vivacious if not beautiful. “I would like to court her.”

“Albright?”

“Yes. I want me a big American woman.”

“They say that Rice was spurned by an Iranian man and that she now has it in for Iran.”

“I’ve heard that,” I tell them. Probably from Iranians.

“Is it true?”
“I don’t know.”