Leaving Córdoba (1 of 5): Man about the barrio

Today, standing on the curb of the busy two-way corridor between our apartment building and the mall across the street, I watched a new-looking taxicab zip by. I don’t know why it first caught my eye, but as it sped away I noticed it had the words “El Sueño de Luis” written on it in black plastic letters stuck onto the trunk. Clearly the car’s owner had dreamed of the car before he could buy it, I thought, and now that he had it, he was announcing his dream-come-true to the world.

Or rather, to the people he had already passed by. This was Luis’s Dream, but only the very rare passenger would ever know it. Who manages to flag down a taxi from behind? And who watches a cab drive away after getting out? A young girl, dropped off at her door after a particularly good date perhaps – she might watch the car spirit her companion away into the night – but even if she could read the words in the low light, what of it?

No, those who ride with Luis – and since the vehicle's name betrayed a pride that only an owner-operator could feel, I have to believe that Luis was the driver as well as the owner – those who ride with him likely have no idea how important the vehicle is to the man behind the wheel.

* * *

We haven’t been taking all that many taxis in Córdoba. The city center is pretty compact, and from where we live it only takes about twenty minutes to walk to just about anywhere you’d want to go. But back when we were going to Buenos Aires every other week for rabies shots, we were in cabs all the time, going to and from either the bus terminal or the airport. Once, on our way to catch an early-morning flight, we found ourselves in the back seat of a cab we’d apparently been in before. The driver remembered us; he’d taken us to the airport on another morning, picking us up at the same spot, right around the same time of day – maybe a little earlier that time, he said. (It was true. We were running late.)

That’s how small Córdoba sometimes feels. This is a city of a million and a couple hundred thousand people, and at least 10,000 taxis, and yet if you stay in your neighborhood, if you cultivate a routine, if you go back to the same kiosk for a coke in a returnable glass bottle on two successive Mondays, people will start to remember you.

* * *

I was thinking about all this while waiting for the light to change, outside the Nuevocentro Shopping mall, holding two large plastic bags of our clean laundry. It’s pretty convenient to live right by a mall. We see movies at the cinema, we print out our documents at its two locutorios, and when we’re feeling too lazy to cook, we sometimes go out for dinner in the food court. There’s a Disco supermarket there, so we end up shopping a lot in the mall, too.

Over the last months, though, I’ve been trying to avoid it. The mall is impossible to ignore: it has a three-sided Coke-and-McDonalds advertisement that is just about the tallest structure in the neighborhood. But I’ve been trying to run almost all of my errands at the local shops in our neighborhood, and the owners have begun to get very friendly, very talkative. It’s partly because I show up every day, partly because these businesses don’t see all that many foreigners, and partly because I finally have mastered enough castellano to actually be able to engage people here in some conversation. Whatever the reason, it’s been fun to get to know a little bit about a few of the neighborhood's fixtures, and it makes me sad to be leaving it so soon.

* * *

I hope that I get to meet Luis the taxi driver before we leave Córdoba, but I wouldn’t bet on it. So instead, over the next couple of weeks – our last weeks in Argentina for the foreseeable future – I’ll try to tell you a bit about the different places and people that I see around here in Barrio Alberdi.