Mokhtar and Nurideen got out and pushed the taxi backward. They laughed. They couldn’t help it. “Been nice knowing you,” Mokhtar said. He figured the odds of survival were about sixty–forty. As they pushed the taxi, Mokhtar noticed a propane tank attached to the trunk. This was common in Yemen, given the gasoline shortages—drivers rigged their engines to run on propane. Mokhtar and Nuri laughed harder. They were pushing a taxi with an exposed propane tank while machine-gun fire rattled over their heads. They couldn’t run away. All their coffee was in the taxi.
These war torn countries always come with fatalistic stories like this. We only hear the tales from the survivors.
