Meeting an Old Friend
June 22, 2005
When Emily and I showed up in Washington on Sunday evening we knew we had a room waiting for us in the Folger guest house on Capitol Hill, right behind the Folger Library. The great mystery was where our car would take up residence. I had a number of possibilities in my head: perhaps we could leave it at a metro stop designated as a park-and-ride stop, or perhaps in rare non-designated spots in some neighborhood, or perhaps even in a long-term parking lot for Dulles Airport.
Our car housing turned out to be on the streets of Capitol Hill. It turned out that with an official letter from the Folger Shakespeare Library we could get a largish tag to stick on the left side of our windshield. The cost, after some discussion and misquotes at the DMV, turned out to be $125.. a large fee, but considerably cheaper and more convenient than other options. Our silver 2000 VW Bug now sits smack in front of the guest house, with a proud little sticker warding off the Washington ticketers.
The car has so far sat there unmoved. One problem with getting a great parking spot is that I am loathe to leave it and thereby risk losing it. But we did not expect to use the car much, as we knew that getting around in Washington would be much easier via foot and metro than by car. We tested this system yesterday as we entered the metro at the South Capitol stop and went to Dupont Circle. One nice thing about the metro system here is that the fee is scaled to the length of the trip. Our relatively short trip cost $1.35 one way, per person. A scaled fee based on length of trip may sound obvious, but in Atlanta all rides cost the same $1.75 one way, per person.. whether one is going to the airport or to the very next local stop.
Our reason for going to Dupont Circle was not simply to remind ourselves that there was more to Washington than the Capitol and the Mall, but to meet my friend Nadav. Our paths first crossed in Fez, Morocco the summer of 2001 when we were studying Arabic at the ALIF Institute.. and then the very next summer I walked into the first CASA meeting in Cairo and saw Nadav sitting there. That year we used our breaks to play something like 150 games of chess.. and generally ragged on each other mercilessly.
But now I am sitting here thinking about how to describe this singular friend. I guess first of all, I know no one who would have written to Bernard Lewis and managed a meeting with that octogenarian orientalist.. as Nadav recently did. I also know no one more willing to jump into a heated “big concept” argument, and his tale of meeting Bernard Lewis inevitably led to a discussion of the state of Middle Eastern Studies. I also can think of no other friend who does not drive a car.. he is as confirmed of a city dweller as I can imagine, and when asked last night about where besides New York he would like to live, he tentatively answered that Philadelphia was a possibility.
I have always prided myself in friends that are different.. a little or a lot outside the run of the mill.. just as I conceive myself to be.. and I might well choose Nadav as an exemplar of what I hope my friends to be.. and it was good to see him again.