minutes late, but the council vultures were relentless. He sighed with relief as he approached the cab and saw that the windscreen was clear. Definitely a sign from the gods: his pursuit of Farhia was blessed.
âLifeâs getting more interesting,â he said to the rear-vision mirror as he drove off in search of more passengers.
Jack did a great deal of daydreaming over the next couple of days. He saw himself defending Farhiaâs honour in the face of brutal assaults from enemy tribes. He rescued her from a fire raging through the high-rise. He took the controls of a plane whose pilot had died, and guided it to a safe landing â with Farhia and her sons on board. He tracked her down when she was wandering lost in the bush, and brought her home safely. He fought and overcame rabid thugs with knives. And so it went on.
Jack wasnât that romantic as a rule, as heâd had decades of getting used to a life almost completely devoid of romance. Underneath his ordinary appearance, though, was a vibrant imagination and a latent thirst for excitement.
He couldnât understand how heâd ended up where he was â a loser going nowhere. It had just happened. He wasnât happy about it, but he didnât care enough to do anything to change it.
He had no plan for getting closer to Farhia. The relative success of his first two encounters had caught him by surprise. Jackâs world was full of pessimism, low expectations, and failure. Missing out was normal. People like him were always at the end of the queue.
What Farhia thought about all this was unclear. Jack wasnât adept at dealing with women from his own background, let alone someone as exotic as Farhia. The fact she had children at least established that she was sexually experienced and heterosexual. Jack wasnât sure whether there were any lesbians in Somalia â he regarded lesbianism as a kind of female fashion statement â but he was relieved he didnât have to find out.
In truth, sex wasnât the main issue. He thought about the desultory relationships heâd had in his twenties and thirties with women whoâd regarded him with an attitude of benign contempt. These relationships had lasted only weeks, a couple of months at the outside, and then fizzled out. There were no dramatic endings, no emotional showdowns, not even any ugly betrayals â just pathetic deflation, like a balloon gradually leaking. They just got sick of him and drifted away.
His forties had been very barren years. Aside from an affair with a woman who had just split up with a nasty, manipulative husband, his scorecard was almost blank. Jack had resigned himself to indefinite single status. The internet appeared at just the right time â when he became a regular consumer of pornography â and it soon became a mechanical means of satisfying his declining sexual urges. These days, it was all about loneliness, not lust. Jackâs dreams of Farhia were about protecting her, not ravishing her.
Jack wanted to call Farhia again, even though he had no suitable excuse for doing so, but he had a practical problem: heâd lost his mobile phone. Endless daydreaming had made him absent-minded, and the phone had disappeared.
He didnât have a landline in the flat, and he didnât want to use the payphone down the road. It was usually out of order anyway.
He wrestled with the known facts about the phoneâs disappearance with an attention to detail that would have impressed Sherlock Holmes. But he still couldnât work out what heâd done with it.
He searched the cab without success. He alerted Ajit when he handed over the cab, and asked him to keep an eye out for it. He did one last search, poking and prodding around under the seats, but to no avail. He asked Ajit to call his number, but there was no sound of a familiar ring-tone. His phone was set to the default ring-tone, because he had never bothered to change it
âLifeâs getting more interesting,â he said to the rear-vision mirror as he drove off in search of more passengers.
Jack did a great deal of daydreaming over the next couple of days. He saw himself defending Farhiaâs honour in the face of brutal assaults from enemy tribes. He rescued her from a fire raging through the high-rise. He took the controls of a plane whose pilot had died, and guided it to a safe landing â with Farhia and her sons on board. He tracked her down when she was wandering lost in the bush, and brought her home safely. He fought and overcame rabid thugs with knives. And so it went on.
Jack wasnât that romantic as a rule, as heâd had decades of getting used to a life almost completely devoid of romance. Underneath his ordinary appearance, though, was a vibrant imagination and a latent thirst for excitement.
He couldnât understand how heâd ended up where he was â a loser going nowhere. It had just happened. He wasnât happy about it, but he didnât care enough to do anything to change it.
He had no plan for getting closer to Farhia. The relative success of his first two encounters had caught him by surprise. Jackâs world was full of pessimism, low expectations, and failure. Missing out was normal. People like him were always at the end of the queue.
What Farhia thought about all this was unclear. Jack wasnât adept at dealing with women from his own background, let alone someone as exotic as Farhia. The fact she had children at least established that she was sexually experienced and heterosexual. Jack wasnât sure whether there were any lesbians in Somalia â he regarded lesbianism as a kind of female fashion statement â but he was relieved he didnât have to find out.
In truth, sex wasnât the main issue. He thought about the desultory relationships heâd had in his twenties and thirties with women whoâd regarded him with an attitude of benign contempt. These relationships had lasted only weeks, a couple of months at the outside, and then fizzled out. There were no dramatic endings, no emotional showdowns, not even any ugly betrayals â just pathetic deflation, like a balloon gradually leaking. They just got sick of him and drifted away.
His forties had been very barren years. Aside from an affair with a woman who had just split up with a nasty, manipulative husband, his scorecard was almost blank. Jack had resigned himself to indefinite single status. The internet appeared at just the right time â when he became a regular consumer of pornography â and it soon became a mechanical means of satisfying his declining sexual urges. These days, it was all about loneliness, not lust. Jackâs dreams of Farhia were about protecting her, not ravishing her.
Jack wanted to call Farhia again, even though he had no suitable excuse for doing so, but he had a practical problem: heâd lost his mobile phone. Endless daydreaming had made him absent-minded, and the phone had disappeared.
He didnât have a landline in the flat, and he didnât want to use the payphone down the road. It was usually out of order anyway.
He wrestled with the known facts about the phoneâs disappearance with an attention to detail that would have impressed Sherlock Holmes. But he still couldnât work out what heâd done with it.
He searched the cab without success. He alerted Ajit when he handed over the cab, and asked him to keep an eye out for it. He did one last search, poking and prodding around under the seats, but to no avail. He asked Ajit to call his number, but there was no sound of a familiar ring-tone. His phone was set to the default ring-tone, because he had never bothered to change it
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