On a bright, cold January day, I step into a D.C. taxicab to take a ride down to the National Mall. My driver’s eyes light up when I ask him to take me to the National Gallery of Art, and he immediately asks what type of art I prefer. That’s because Ali Shoja is not only a taxi driver; he is an artist.

Shoja says he emigrated from Iran about 30 years ago and has been driving a taxi for 25 of his years in the United States; before that, he worked as a waiter and a mechanic. “I like to socialize,” he says, “If the ride is bad or long, it doesn’t upset me. I just make conversation and the time passes quickly.” He adds that he enjoys meeting people from all different walks of life as they sit in the back of his taxi.

About 15 years ago, he took up art, partly as a way to pass the time while waiting for passengers at hotels like the Four Seasons, where he began to sketch other drivers waiting at the stands. He has always been interested in faces, he says, and he paints portraits almost exclusively. He likes to make pastel portraits of strangers as they sit and eat at McDonald’s and, if the weather is nice, he will go to Dupont Circle and do free caricatures of passersby.

One driver, who requested anonymity, says he usually makes only about $100 a day, with at least $40 of that spent on gas. Like a large percentage of D.C. taxi drivers, he is an Ethiopian immigrant, having departed Africa for America six years ago, leaving his family behind.

Harry Sejour, a Haitian immigrant and D.C. taxi driver, certainly knows about problems with the government. He says in his home country, a perceived slight to a government official led him to be imprisoned for six months. He was released in 1975 with the help of the UN Human Rights Commission, but he still sports an impressive scar from a bayonet wound on his left forearm. At one time he lived in Paris where he says, despite speaking fluent French (the administrative language of Haiti), he was unable to find a job because of the color of his skin. It was his brother, a U.S. citizen living in Silver Spring, Md., that suggested he come to the United States. He much prefers Maryland to the overcrowded District: “I don’t like D.C.,” he says. “There’s nowhere to park your car.”

Like Shoja, Sejour has also worn the hat of an artist, playing saxophone and flute in places like Martinique and Guadalupe. When I ask if he still plays, he says, “No, I am adult now.”
As I ride in the backseat of Sejour’s car, the dulcet tones of an NPR announcer radiate from the speakers, and so I ask Sejour about his political views. He says he hopes that Hillary Clinton will win the presidential race. The election, he says, is very important given the state of the world today. “Everything is upside down, people cannot eat, people lose their houses,” he said.

Shoja and the Ethiopian driver, who was granted anonymity for job-related concerns, echo this bleak world view, particularly when it comes to their job. Traffic and quarrelsome passengers are sources of daily stress. “A lot of people [are] angry, they abuse me,” says the anonymous driver. Though he usually works from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., a profitable day is not a certainty. “I have no guarantee,” he says, “just a license.”

Besides monetary worries, there is the threat of physical violence. “This group [taxi drivers] has the most dangerous job and gets the worst treatment from D.C. government agencies,” Shoja says. “Cab drivers are the easiest target for the criminals,” he points out, because they “can be taken to whatever place suits the criminals” who get into the cab and pretend to be ordinary passengers. During his 25 years behind the wheel, he has had three close calls. “Two of those were direct attempts on my life and the third one was a robbery with threat of using a gun. I did not see the gun, but I didn’t take any chances either.”

Their City, Their Cab
Shoja said that working on portraits and caricatures is only “a temporary escape from hardship.” He blames a great deal of his plight on the rules and regulations imposed on his and many other taxi drivers’ trade by the D.C. Taxicab Commission and, by proxy, the city and Congress.

“Cab drivers well understand,” Shoja says, “that when the D.C. government talks about any change, it means another attack on cab drivers’ limited income.” The rising price of gas, among other factors, already eats into that income, he adds.

“Let me tell you something, I am financially a lot worse in this business than 20 years ago. The same with other cab drivers,” Shoja says.

An independent operator, Shoja emblazoned his taxi not with a diamond, nor a 1-800 number, but with his own name. D.C.’s decentralized taxi industry means that, with the relatively small start-up costs of a car and a city license, a driver can run an independent business, setting his own hours and keeping all of his profits.

Unlike in other major cities, like the taxi cab-central New York City, D.C.’s taxi industry is not dominated by a few big companies. Many drivers are completely independent. Even those associated with a company often own their cab and pay the company a relatively small fee for the dispatch radio installed in the car, rather than handing over a large percentage of their profits.

This is, in part, because D.C.’s unique zone system favors an industry made up of independent drivers rather than one dominated by a few large companies.

Under the current fare system, drivers themselves keep track of zone fares earned using a pen and paper, making it harder for a company with which they are affiliated to keep tabs on the money earned by its drivers. In contrast, under a meter system, such as in New York City, fares are automatically recorded and stored by the machine.

Drivers are proud of their independence and fiercely protective of it. “I don’t like working for someone else,” says Talib Kahn, who has driven a cab for five years. Born in Pakistan, he is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and an intricate gold icon of a Medina mosque hangs from his rearview mirror. “It’s a decent living if you work hard at it,” he says of the job.

Running the Meters
D.C. drivers might not be independent for much longer. On Oct. 17, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty announced that, after more than 70 years under the zone system, D.C. taxi drivers will be required to install meters in their cabs. The proposed change— set to take place on April 6 of this year — has angered drivers, some of whom even staged a 24-hour strike last Halloween to protest the mayor’s decision.

One of their biggest complaints is that installing and maintaining a meter will be too expensive for some drivers, who will instead be forced to give up their independence by joining larger companies. These companies can then cover the costs of the meters for them.

Under a meter system, larger companies could demand daily “rent” from their drivers. Khan and others say that in New York City, cab drivers pay their parent companies up to $100 per day, a considerable fee for a D.C. driver. That type of fee, a minimum that must be met every day, together with the stress of trying to support a family on a limited income, would probably lead more drivers to cheat, Khan reasons.

Many passengers, on the other hand, are happy about the upcoming switch to meters. Though the zone system is supposed to provide regularity in fares, the combination of zone-map confusion and occasionally dishonest drivers leaves some customers feeling cheated. Joanna Ruf (COL ’08) regularly takes taxis to see shows at D.C.’s Arena Stage and complains that she gets charged sometimes wildly different amounts. Georgina Petronella (COL ’05), a Rosslyn resident who often takes a cab home from the Georgetown area, complains of a similar phenomenon on her ride home. She has been asked to pay fares ranging from $7.00 to $20.00.

The zone system can seem particularly absurd to Georgetown University students, since the campus sits on the border of two zones. It can mean several dollars difference in fare if a student catches a cab at 36th and O Streets rather than at the university’s front gates, only a block away.

It remains to be seen if the switch to meters will bring about the changes some drivers fear.

But one thing is certain: As you travel the streets of D.C. in a taxi cab, the most interesting conversation you could have on the way to your destination may not be with your fellow passenger beside you, but with the driver in front of you.