Incident On The Path Train (Story)
I went out with my girlfriend a few nights ago to have a long a leisurely dinner with two of our friends in the Village. We met up with them a little late, but there were no hard feelings; despite the delay, we were in high sprits and happy to see each other. We asked each other how we had been, got caught up on the details of mutual friends’ lives, and told a few satisfying stories over some good Japanese food and beer. After dinner, we walked with them to the West 4th Street stop hugged and kissed our goodbyes, and walked up two blocks to the PATH station at 9th St. and Sixth Ave. As we had inadvertently learned on our inbound journey, the PATH train was running on a holiday schedule because of President’s Day, so we got settled in for a longer than normal wait. My girlfriend and I were talking about who we would like to set up with one of our good friends in DC, half-heartedly attempted to clarify some of the murky points of Brown vs. Board of Education decision in light of the contours of the Fourteenth Amendment, and we good-naturedly complained about how stuffed we were from dinner. We slowly made our way from the station entrance and stood at the end of the platform; behavior learned from anticipating how to board the train in order to exit the car at our station and be closest to the stairs leading up to the street. We did not have to wait long; a few minutes later, the train arrived, sporting the two-tone blue and orange headlights signifying that it would stop in Hoboken that night as well, before continuing on to Journal Square to start its return to New York. We would be home in 20 minutes, not too bad as far as our trip was concerned but still too late to catch the beginning of a show we wanted to see that started at 9 PM.
The train was packed with passengers, so we entered the first car of the train hoping to get seats as the front cars usually tend to be less crowded. Despite our best efforts, no seats were to be found on the train so we ended up standing close to the door, at the end of a row of seats in the first car. W both clasped a pole for balance and carried on our conversation, both in English and in Persian. I held the pole with my right hand, and placed my left in my coat pocket to keep warm. I was looking forward to getting home and unwinding a bit before going to bed.
We had been on the train no longer than 5 minutes when a White woman standing next to me barely turned around and haughtily told me, as headmistress might bark at an unruly pupil, that if I turned and faced the window of the train that I would not keep bumping her. Having not touched her at all, I was confused as to who this woman was speaking to in such a manner, turning my head full around and seeing that there was no other passenger within a foot and a half radius of her. I rolled my eyes and paid no mind; after 7 years of riding the NYC subway and PATH, I knew crazy people often ride the train and it’s best to leave them be. Moments of potential conflict patiently accompany us everywhere we go, but their actualization is entirely dependent on how we choose to conduct ourselves. I calmly and cordially told the woman I hadn’t touched her to which she shook her maroon-bereted head tersely, still refusing to turn around and interact with me face to face. This passive-aggressive diffidence on her part infuriated me, but I saw the futility of trying to talk to someone so socially pathological and rude.
Instead, I chose to refrain from giving the crazy woman some choice words and ignore her. I continued my conversation with my girlfriend, now entirely in Persian because I wanted to express to her how incredibly annoying I found certain White people to be owing to this innate sense of social entitlement. It is a symptom of privilege and a sense of social superiority that somehow allows a person to speak as though their preferences are legally binding. I find it strange that one should be so sensitive about a sense of personal space on mass transit, when the train is hurtling along at upwards of 40 miles per hour over swerving and rickety tracks. It is inevitable to brush against a passenger standing in your immediate vicinity (Black, White, rich, homeless, etc.) when a 30 year old train executes a hairpin turn in a narrow tunnel at high speed. I spoke, in Persian still, of how someone needing so much personal space had no business using mass transit and should forego buying anymore frizzy maroon berets to purchase a car, where she could estrange herself from other suburban commuters and avoid the injustice of standing on the train. Whatever. It was over—the woman was crazy, case closed. My girlfriend and I shrugged and moved on to other topics.
A few minutes after my exchange with bereted woman, still traversing the Hudson River, the conductor of the train approached me from the rear of the car and told me in no uncertain terms to move over to my right, in essence acting as the woman’s security detail. Potential conflict reared its ugly head, anxious to materialize out of thin air. I complied with the conductor’s instructions without argument, but inside I seethed. I am a Middle Eastern man in this dystopian post-Sept 11 society-what can I do? This was a trap, similar to going through airport security. Since 9-11, I have flown about 20 times and I have been ‘randomly selected’ for additional security screening 9 times. I have been interviewed and privately searched; I have kept all of the special stickers intact that they slap on your passport and boarding passes when they want to screen you further. And if you get upset at being treated like shit, then you present the authorities with probable cause to take ‘additional security measures.’ I summoned those lessons learned into that moment on the train with me.
If I raised my voice to confront the conductor, I knew I would lose the war of perception—I would be considered to be overly aggressive, or perhaps to be jeopardizing the safety of PATH passengers-not defending my civil rights. I noted the looks of alarm and disapproval from several passengers who were gawking at me at this point. I had become the bad guy, the menacing foreigner who had spoken a foreign Middle Eastern language while standing too close to a White woman. My girlfriend was looking at the conductor as he actually apologized to the woman for the inconvenience of standing next to me, touching the brim of his hat like a charming sea admiral as me made his way back over to the end of the car. Problem solved--chivalry is alive and well in New Jersey. Samira wasn’t having it and spoke up. “He didn’t do anything wrong you know” she said, “he was just standing here.” To which the conductor replied, “There is plenty of room, no need to stand there so I asked him to move, that’s all.” This exchange drew the attention of about 10 more onlookers from our end of the car, curious at the scene that was unfolding before them.
Samira raised her voice and persisted. She was good at this sort of thing, upping the ante and grabbing more attention—it leaves no doubt as to what the issue was about, she told me later. “This doesn’t make sense-he wasn’t doing anything; we were just talking, so I don’t understand why he has to move. Why did you ask him to move? For what reason?” The conductor’s expression changed from self-satisfaction to one of hostile condescension. “Because I asked him. Ok? It’s no big deal. I just asked him to move. There is all that room, so he don’t need to stand so close.”
Samira’s voice reached higher decibels. “I don’t understand why you won’t give a reason for why you asked him to move-he wasn’t doing anything wrong, he was standing here, we were talking. You shouldn’t make people to move without a reason.” The conductor, pressured by Samira, now raised his voice as well. “Because I asked him- I asked him to. He moved because I asked him. There is no reason for him to have to stand there” looking pointedly at the White woman, “when there is all that room over there” jerking his gaze back toward Samira. One of the passengers nodded her head in support of the conductor’s response.
The train was winding into the Hoboken station and we just looked at each other. “This is bullshit” I said. Samira shook her head angrily. “I want to get his badge number and follow up with this.” The doors finally opened at Hoboken. I took a page out of Samira’s book and said too loudly, to attract attention: “Let’s switch cars here: I don’t want to ride in a car where I am being racially profiled because some crazy White woman is uncomfortable standing next to me. This is absolute bullshit.”
We stepped outside the car and started walking up to find a car farther down from the one we were riding in. Samira stopped and said, “I don’t just want to walk away from this—I want his badge number because this is ridiculous. I feel humiliated and we didn’t do anything.” The conductor was monitoring our departure, following us by passing through the cars and continuing to glare at us. Samira glared back, and then walked back into the train. “Sir, I want you to give me your badge number.”
The train was packed with passengers, so we entered the first car of the train hoping to get seats as the front cars usually tend to be less crowded. Despite our best efforts, no seats were to be found on the train so we ended up standing close to the door, at the end of a row of seats in the first car. W both clasped a pole for balance and carried on our conversation, both in English and in Persian. I held the pole with my right hand, and placed my left in my coat pocket to keep warm. I was looking forward to getting home and unwinding a bit before going to bed.
We had been on the train no longer than 5 minutes when a White woman standing next to me barely turned around and haughtily told me, as headmistress might bark at an unruly pupil, that if I turned and faced the window of the train that I would not keep bumping her. Having not touched her at all, I was confused as to who this woman was speaking to in such a manner, turning my head full around and seeing that there was no other passenger within a foot and a half radius of her. I rolled my eyes and paid no mind; after 7 years of riding the NYC subway and PATH, I knew crazy people often ride the train and it’s best to leave them be. Moments of potential conflict patiently accompany us everywhere we go, but their actualization is entirely dependent on how we choose to conduct ourselves. I calmly and cordially told the woman I hadn’t touched her to which she shook her maroon-bereted head tersely, still refusing to turn around and interact with me face to face. This passive-aggressive diffidence on her part infuriated me, but I saw the futility of trying to talk to someone so socially pathological and rude.
Instead, I chose to refrain from giving the crazy woman some choice words and ignore her. I continued my conversation with my girlfriend, now entirely in Persian because I wanted to express to her how incredibly annoying I found certain White people to be owing to this innate sense of social entitlement. It is a symptom of privilege and a sense of social superiority that somehow allows a person to speak as though their preferences are legally binding. I find it strange that one should be so sensitive about a sense of personal space on mass transit, when the train is hurtling along at upwards of 40 miles per hour over swerving and rickety tracks. It is inevitable to brush against a passenger standing in your immediate vicinity (Black, White, rich, homeless, etc.) when a 30 year old train executes a hairpin turn in a narrow tunnel at high speed. I spoke, in Persian still, of how someone needing so much personal space had no business using mass transit and should forego buying anymore frizzy maroon berets to purchase a car, where she could estrange herself from other suburban commuters and avoid the injustice of standing on the train. Whatever. It was over—the woman was crazy, case closed. My girlfriend and I shrugged and moved on to other topics.
A few minutes after my exchange with bereted woman, still traversing the Hudson River, the conductor of the train approached me from the rear of the car and told me in no uncertain terms to move over to my right, in essence acting as the woman’s security detail. Potential conflict reared its ugly head, anxious to materialize out of thin air. I complied with the conductor’s instructions without argument, but inside I seethed. I am a Middle Eastern man in this dystopian post-Sept 11 society-what can I do? This was a trap, similar to going through airport security. Since 9-11, I have flown about 20 times and I have been ‘randomly selected’ for additional security screening 9 times. I have been interviewed and privately searched; I have kept all of the special stickers intact that they slap on your passport and boarding passes when they want to screen you further. And if you get upset at being treated like shit, then you present the authorities with probable cause to take ‘additional security measures.’ I summoned those lessons learned into that moment on the train with me.
If I raised my voice to confront the conductor, I knew I would lose the war of perception—I would be considered to be overly aggressive, or perhaps to be jeopardizing the safety of PATH passengers-not defending my civil rights. I noted the looks of alarm and disapproval from several passengers who were gawking at me at this point. I had become the bad guy, the menacing foreigner who had spoken a foreign Middle Eastern language while standing too close to a White woman. My girlfriend was looking at the conductor as he actually apologized to the woman for the inconvenience of standing next to me, touching the brim of his hat like a charming sea admiral as me made his way back over to the end of the car. Problem solved--chivalry is alive and well in New Jersey. Samira wasn’t having it and spoke up. “He didn’t do anything wrong you know” she said, “he was just standing here.” To which the conductor replied, “There is plenty of room, no need to stand there so I asked him to move, that’s all.” This exchange drew the attention of about 10 more onlookers from our end of the car, curious at the scene that was unfolding before them.
Samira raised her voice and persisted. She was good at this sort of thing, upping the ante and grabbing more attention—it leaves no doubt as to what the issue was about, she told me later. “This doesn’t make sense-he wasn’t doing anything; we were just talking, so I don’t understand why he has to move. Why did you ask him to move? For what reason?” The conductor’s expression changed from self-satisfaction to one of hostile condescension. “Because I asked him. Ok? It’s no big deal. I just asked him to move. There is all that room, so he don’t need to stand so close.”
Samira’s voice reached higher decibels. “I don’t understand why you won’t give a reason for why you asked him to move-he wasn’t doing anything wrong, he was standing here, we were talking. You shouldn’t make people to move without a reason.” The conductor, pressured by Samira, now raised his voice as well. “Because I asked him- I asked him to. He moved because I asked him. There is no reason for him to have to stand there” looking pointedly at the White woman, “when there is all that room over there” jerking his gaze back toward Samira. One of the passengers nodded her head in support of the conductor’s response.
The train was winding into the Hoboken station and we just looked at each other. “This is bullshit” I said. Samira shook her head angrily. “I want to get his badge number and follow up with this.” The doors finally opened at Hoboken. I took a page out of Samira’s book and said too loudly, to attract attention: “Let’s switch cars here: I don’t want to ride in a car where I am being racially profiled because some crazy White woman is uncomfortable standing next to me. This is absolute bullshit.”
We stepped outside the car and started walking up to find a car farther down from the one we were riding in. Samira stopped and said, “I don’t just want to walk away from this—I want his badge number because this is ridiculous. I feel humiliated and we didn’t do anything.” The conductor was monitoring our departure, following us by passing through the cars and continuing to glare at us. Samira glared back, and then walked back into the train. “Sir, I want you to give me your badge number.”
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