ChicTrib

Journey away from terror ends in quiet hope

Published September 30, 2001

When we last saw Joy Ding and her Pakistani cabdriver, they were fleeing for Chicago, the taillights of their 1996 Dodge van receding from the smoke of the World Trade Center. Here's a recap of their story, begun in Friday's column:

Ding, 29, who grew up in China, is the marketing manager for R.R. Donnelley Logistics in Willowbrook. On Sept. 11, she flew to New York for a meeting. About 9 a.m., she hopped into an airport cab. While the World Trade Center burned and rumbled, the cabbie tried to get her to downtown Manhattan. He met roadblock after roadblock.

The driver, Nadeem Quraishi, 29, was prepared to take Ding wherever she wanted to go. Cabbie's duty. Just say where. She had nowhere. So she wound up in the one-bedroom Bronx apartment shared by Quraishi's sister and brother-in-law and three sons. Traditional Muslims, they treated her like a VIP, serving her Pakistani snacks while helping explore her options to get home. When all else failed, Quraishi, who never had driven farther than Connecticut, said he and his brother-in-law would drive her.

Now here they were, liberated from six hours of New York gridlock into free New Jersey, starving.

"So," Quraishi says, "we say, `OK, let's try Chinese food.' When she was at our home, we asked her to try our food. Now we would have her food."

They found a Chinese restaurant. Ding ordered, careful to choose foods suitable for Muslims. They got back into the van.

About midnight, they stopped for gas. The station owner turned out to be Pakistani. "The gas is free," he said.

The threesome rode through the night, through the Pennsylvania mountains, a broken radio antenna denying them updates on the news, Ding stretched out asleep in the back, the men drinking Cokes to stay awake. In the morning, in Ohio, they bought newspapers and gazed in awe at the destruction they'd left behind.

The new day and the interstate rolled on. Ding read the papers aloud. The three talked. About terrorism. About the mistreatment of Middle Easterners in New York. About God. It was the first time Ding really had talked to Muslims. They weren't, as she'd often heard, crazy.

In the afternoon, Ding phoned home and asked her in-laws to cook dinner. No pork, she specified on her guests' behalf, no alcohol.

Ding's husband and baby were holding vigil in the front window when, about 4 p.m., the van pulled up to her home in HighPoint Community in Romeoville, a development rich in yards and porches. Quraishi, accustomed to New York crowds, said the lake and the trees reminded him of the countryside of Pakistan.

The adults sat down to a dinner of string beans and stir-fried catfish. Having learned her guests like spicy food, Ding served hot sauce on the side. They talked, about China, Pakistan, cab driving.

"My husband is very shy person," Ding says, "so he usually feels odd when he's talking to someone, but they have really good conversation."

The men napped briefly in the Dings' bedroom. Refused to spend the night. As they left, Quraishi and Ding hugged hard and traded wishes. Keep in touch. Be careful. He said he'd invite her to his wedding.

Pulling away, Quraishi says, he got a reward far beyond the good fee Ding paid him: the sight of her face, so distraught the day before, now flushed with happiness as she stood with her baby.

That's all. This story has no grand finale. No marriage. No mayhem. It's just a tale of Americans of differing shades and accents who opened to each other in a moment when it would have been so easy to be closed.

"I'm honored that she trusted me," Quraishi said Thursday, talking on his cell phone as he cruised New York's Upper West Side, where business is bad these days, at least for a Pakistani Muslim. "It was my privilege and honor that she never showed that she was scared."

This is what Ding thought as he drove away: "He did a very tough thing. I probably wouldn't do it for someone else. He's going back to another world, and not a friendly place. I'm worried for him."

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2001