Arab, Shik Cabbies Offer Free Rides

Volunteers help families, hope to avoid harassment

By Chastity Pratt and Melanie Lefkowitz | STAFF WRITERS

September 16, 2001

It was an offer of camaraderie, born of patriotism to the United States and increasing fear of fellow Americans.

A stream of at least 20 yellow cabs driven by Arab-American and Sikh taxi drivers lined up along Lexington Avenue near 26th Street yesterday, with the drivers offering free cab rides to the throngs of grief-stricken people who gathered at the Armory to report people missing and feared dead at the World Trade Center.

American flags swung from the taxi cabs' antennas. Signs placed in the back windows bore patriotic messages such as, "Pak-American taxi volunteer. God Bless America."

The cab drivers, fearing they are easy targets for harassment since the attack is being blamed on radical Middle Eastern Muslims, said they want to be embraced as American countrymen and not unjustly vilified as members of a murderous clan.

They want to help.

"Every taxi driver from every different nationality is starting to volunteer by helping victims' families any way we can," said yellow cab driver Jawaid Toppa, 32, who moved to the United States from Pakistan.

"We're living in America and we're proud of America," he said.

Kevin Fitzpatrick, an organizer with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said he had not heard of any Muslim drivers being physically attacked, but that at least one driver had his tires slashed and the windows of his cab broken in Brooklyn. Some Muslim drivers are afraid to go to work and some Sikh drivers have been harassed, mistaken for Muslim because they wear turbans, he said.

"Americans saw 'Lawrence of Arabia' and think all Muslims wear turbans," Fitzpatrick said.

Surinder Singh, a yellow cab driver from India, said that on Friday night his son Manga Singh, also a yellow cab driver, picked up a man who reached through the open partition and tried to beat him with an umbrella while yelling, "I hate you, I hate you and your turban."

Surinder Singh recalled a rider who said to him, "You do that, you attacked the World Trade Center!"

"And I say, 'No, I am an American Sikh. . . . Osama bin Laden has a turban, but it's very different.' But people don't realize it's different," he said.

Livery cab driving, long regarded one of the city's more dangerous jobs, has felt even more so this week for some. While some Arab-American livery cab drivers say they are not afraid, others fear the next call they receive could deliver them into the hands of a harasser - or worse.

"In my neighborhood, someone told me, 'You should move from here,' " said driver Mohamad Latif, of Brooklyn. "I am not afraid. I drive. The only thing that hurts me is that everyone is looking at us as if we did that," referring to the destruction.

The drivers said they know people who are missing and may have died as a result of Tuesday's attack on the World Trade Center. They said they have family members who donated blood to help the victims.