ABSTRACT
I was headed for the Omni Park Central Hotel in New York City at nine in the morning. The Pakistani cabbie suddenly became solemn when I confided to him in Urdu that he was transporting a candidate for a job interview at the Modern Language Association Annual Meeting. “Do you have a green card?” the driver asked me. “No, but I'll apply for one if I get a job.” “In this motherfucking country,” he opined, “you only get jobs when you know something about cars.”
