“No, I haven’t had been in any scary situations – unless you count when I don’t make any money and I have to go home and face my wife,” jokes Shakeel Bashir on a drizzling Sunday afternoon as he talks about his experiences as a Boston taxicab driver.
As the windshield wipers whine the same tune for three hours, they disperse the rain for a vivid look at Boston – a look that owes its vibrancy and clarity partially to Shakeel’s insights, and partially to the bottle of Windex on the floor.
In the cup holder rests a bottle of Minute Maid juice, a fitting brand for a man who makes his living in 60-second time periods. Filling the small hollow in the armrest are pennies, Shakeel’s version of “take a penny, leave a penny.”
Whether it is the snug sweater or the thick skin he seems to have developed, something guards Shakeel from the chill as he breathes the crisp air of a 30-something degree night through a half-open window and recounts the years of his life (which also number in the 30s).
From a man who works an average of 11 hours a day, seven days a week and still manages to punctuate his sentences with smiles, comes the story of how he became a cab driver.
Born in Pakistan and raised in Meriden, Conn., Shakeel is the son of grocery store owners. A weakening economy forced the family to sell its store.
“We just kind of hit rock bottom, and a friend of my brother suggested that we come to Boston to drive cabs for a few years in order to get back on our feet,” he said.
Shakeel took a three-day class, which he said was easy, paid $40 for his license and then took another class on how to serve people in wheelchairs because he drives a wheelchair van.
Though Shakeel has been driving a cab in Boston for six years, he has encountered a few pit stops along the way. Three years ago, he left the cab industry with the help of his family and invested in a West Coast company called Post Atlantic. What he thought was a stable business venture turned out to be an investment scam that robbed him of $30,000. In mid-December he learned that the case will never be heard because a lawyer never brought it to court.
Then, two years ago, Shakeel became a manager at a Sunoco gas station, but turned in his uniform because of a situation that he says caused him to compromise his principles.
Nevertheless, Shakeel has managed to find his cloud’s checkered lining. He enjoys the freedom of being a cabby. He is his own boss.
“I don’t have to do a dance for anyone,” he says. “It’s great to meet different people and strike up conversations, and when it comes to people, it doesn’t get any better than Boston.”
He navigates cab #1560 through the city listening to classical music on 102.7-FM if he is not feeling well, Qwali (a Pakistani singer) for some Pakistani sounds, or oldies, which still “carry a lot of spirit.”
Although he rarely makes more than $100 a day, one day Shakeel heard the radio dispatcher tell him “Merry Christmas” after assigning him a pickup that went to New York – and earned him more than $400.
Boston’s college students also help bring in good fares.
“This city is completely different without college students,” Shakeel says. “They are the livelihood for many people in Kenmore and all the way down in Brookline. You see smiles when they are here and sad faces when they are gone.”
But Boston University’s new system that charters buses during the holiday season to Logan Airport for $5 is bad for cab drivers who depend on those fares, he says.
As Shakeel’s 2000 Dodge Grand Caravan picks up passengers from the Ritz-Carlton one moment and waits outside multifamily houses with chipped paint the next, he talks about his life away from the driver’s seat. At one time, he would get all the Porky’s and Godfather movies and watch them all in one weekend or play cricket in Brookline. But now Shakeel has put hobbies on hiatus to spend time with his two-and-a-half-year-old son, Usma Ali Shakeel, and his wife, Uzma Munir.
“That’s the stuff you live for. Just seeing him is like a breath of fresh air,” he says of his son.
He also recently found time to read a book about the true foundations of Islam, his religion.
“It dealt with patience and honesty, all the things in life it takes to be a humble person,” he said. “You know, when you go from owning all these stores to driving a taxi, you got to be humble.”
Both Shakeel’s older brother, Suhail, and Metro Cab manager Steve Sullivan described him as friendly and a good person, whether he is at work or at home with the family. “He seems like a hardworking man who has respect for himself and his family,” Sullivan said.
But as Shakeel speaks, a slight hint of disappointment with the cab industry’s current condition undercuts his story. Shakeel says the negative side of his job comes from within and is beginning to take its toll.
“To me, the cab industry today is like when piranhas eat an animal like a cow or something. and underneath it’s all devoured but on the top of the water it looks like it’s still breathing and everything,” he said. “It’s not what it appears on the surface.
“It’s one thing to try and understand a cab driver from one of these HBO series, but you really need to look at the financial aspect,” Shakeel added. He said Boston cabs have all taken a turn for the worst, signaled by sketchy dealings involving medallions – numbers issued by the city that allow taxis on the road. People are hoarding medallions, he says, to lease them to others for prices so high no working-class person could possibly afford them.
“I just don’t see how anyone today can make a living driving a cab,” he said. “It’s just impossible right now. All the money in this industry goes to the big fish. But no one wants to open their mouths.
“I don’t know why people don’t want to come out and say what it is,” he continued. “This is, after all, America. If something’s being done, you can come out and say what it is, but you better make sure you’re not doing anything yourself either. Maybe there is too much sneaky stuff going on that maybe people don’t want it to come on the surface.”
Shakeel blames what he sees as a lack of helpful, courteous and honest behavior toward passengers on an industry that prevents drivers from seeing them as anything but a means of ekeing out a living.
“If you try to come to Copley from the airport, 99 percent of the cab drivers are going to go Ted Williams [Tunnel] to [Interstate] 93 North and then come all the way back around to Storrow Drive to bring you to Copley,” he offered as an example. “Then they justify it by saying ‘I was sitting there waiting for two hours. What do I care? Nobody cares for me.'”
His irritation at seeing those who don’t follow the rules get ahead reflects an even deeper disappointment.
“I used to always hear that hard work gets you where you want in America and that America is the land of opportunity,” Shakeel said. “I don’t know where those two things have gone today.”
In the future, he hopes to leave the cab industry. His friends have a running joke with him that Pakistani people are only supposed to be good at two things: running convenience stores and driving cabs.
“That’s maybe the reason I don’t know what’s next,” he said, adding that he wants to have his own business one day. First, he is looking for cheap legal help to get his money back from the investment scam.
Shakeel pulls the cab to the side of the road a final time and says, “I’m still out here trying, and hopefully with the grace of God one day I’ll find success. If not, then at least I want to keep trying.”
Like the oldies radio station he listens to in his cab, he pulls away, still carrying a lot of spirit.