Los Angeles Azules, Cómo te voy a olvidar

I was running late and had to take a cab. The driver whose name I forgot asked me, "Where to?" After telling him where I was going he started driving. The cab was an absolute mess, on the outside it had undergone several crashes and looked like a campechana (a type of Mexican rugged fine pastry) and the inside was no different. All the seats seemed like they had seen better days and the fabric of the sides and ceiling were ragged and dirty.

The funny part is that the driver looked just as the car did, his hands were black from car grease and some of it was under his nails. On his left hand, rested a pristine peeled mandarin he was eating and as he ate the segments, he spat the seeds outside the window.

He took another mandarin and as he peeled it, we stopped the car for a bit. He then, to my amazement threw one of the peelings towards a guy in the street. It landed right on his cheek. There is a Mexican phrase when someone is about to hit you and mess you up pretty badly which is "le van a romper su mandarina en gajos". It literally means "they're gonna break [his] mandarin in segments", well, I thought of that phrase ironically as this guy on the street turned around to look who had slapped him with a mandarin peeling.

The driver was laughing as he saw my face, "Don't worry, I know him". Sure enough the guy on the street came over to the cab, peeked into the passenger's window and took one mandarin out of the bag, cursed him and they both laughed.

The driver then kept driving and on to tell me he once was a bus driver and that's why he knew this guy, "he controls the buses in the streets but that was before the shootings". I immediately asked him, "What shootings?" "Oh, I was shot three times, one on the intestines and two on the right leg. Two guys came in the bus, took everyone's money and after they jumped out, one of them turned around and shot me. I asked him if he wasn't scared of driving a cab or a bus for that matter and he said "Neh, I'm cool with it". "Were you angry at life or the guy that shot you?" I asked but he replied in the same tone of voice, "Neh, I was happy I was given another chance, thanks to the Virgecita"(Virgin of Guadalupe).

Throughout all the conversation he kept peeling mandarins and spatting the seeds out of the window which made this a mixture of comic carelessness and tragic recount, both at the same time. Mexico, I thought, is bits of these bittersweet windows of reality, where violence sometimes determines the curse of one's life but what we do afterwards is entirely up to us. Mexicans like to think we defy Mr. Death but if we are able to win one more round at the game of life, that is just fine. There was no bitterness in the driver's voice, no shadows lurking in his eyes or traces of resentment, he was truly fine, gobbling mandarins, being a father of two, singing to Los Angeles Azules and driving his rattling vehicle across town.