“Thanks for not canceling when you saw my name… I’ve had little business lately”

I

t’s pouring cats and dogs in Jerusalem, so I take a taxi to a class I attend with a friend.

Innocuous enough, no?

No.

I slip onto cold leather, peel my hood off, and the driver looks at me from the rearview mirror. His eyes are dark, dark under his unibrow; his face swarthy and thin.

“You know I’m Arab,” he says.

“I know,” I say, trying to keep my voice even.

A split second before I left the house, I’d glanced at the Gett page on my husband’s phone to see the last few numbers on the driver’s licence plate, and caught sight of the driver’s name.

“Mohamed?”

“It’s okay, I think,” my husband said. “I’ve taken a few Arab taxis lately and it’s been fine. Look, you need to get there on time, you just gotta do what you gotta do…”

“Okay,” I didn’t have a moment to think. You know how it is till a woman gets out of the house.

And besides, of the two of us, my husband is the more careful one; if he thought it was fine….