I was prompted to write something about NYC, as my dear friend Mohabbat (more like Nafrat) who thinks that London is a better place to live, and sadly, most people agree with him. All these people will burn in hell.
People like NY for various reason and hate it even for more reasons than that. I will tell you how I came here, and what made me like this place so much. Before that, a couple of famous quotes about NYC:
“In America’s toughest city, even Mother Teresa tries to get a little edge” - Time magazine
“ 90% of people walking along the street in Manhattan would e interviewed in any other town, and the other 10% would be arrested.” - Calvin Triffin
It has got a lot weirder since then – NYAhmadi
It is my fascination to the absurd, preposterous and dangerous that makes this city so attractive to me. Some 10 years ago, on a TWA plane I landed at JFK. My wife was to join me a week later, after I had found a place for us to start our new life. I arrived in the middle of the night, and the arrivals terminal was populated by every sort of tout: hotel agents, cabbies, all there. Cabbies demanded 50 dollars for a ride to the city. With not enough money to afford that, I opted for a bus link to the nearest subway station to go train and go to the Upper East Side, where I had a friend. To arrive in Manhattan at night is to be confronted by a dramatic and glittering skyline reaching to the heavens, home to the richest city in the world. At 2am the subway is dormitory to the homeless. I bought my token from a clerk sitting behind a bullet proof booth. Smart NYC Subway riders, I was told, carry two guns, in case one is stolen. At Queens Plaza where I had to change the train, there were Guardian Angles (a Vigilante group noted for their adept use of the Martial Arts). Whereas JFK had been lacking in bilingual signs, the Subway ads were more often than not in Spanish. I surveyed the help-line telephone numbers for Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Children, and the Disabled. Food and Hunger hotline, the Alcohol-Drug hotline. Women, foreigners, Coalition for the Homeless. Board certified surgeons, and same day Hernia surgery… Just the kind of place, I always wanted to live in.
20 minutes later the train still hadn’t moved. Over the cracking PA system our driver informed us that a man had committed suicide by jumping into the path of the train in front of us. As Driver passed through our carriage, I asked, what happened? He says “I guess some people prefer to go by train”.
At around 4 am I finally arrived at my friend’s apartment building. I spent a couple of hours with the doorman, and waited until 6 to ring the buzzer.
As time has gone by, I have seen many sides of this beautiful city. The rich side, the homeless side, the criminal and the sane side. All of these sides have an appeal for me. I am fascinated by the stories of the early immigrants, the early financiers, the merchants, the sick and the lonely. This city has never turned anyone back that has set foot here. Even today, with increasing hostility towards immigration, NYC municipal Government is the only entity in the USA that has same civil rights for undocumented (illegal) aliens.
It will get very long here if I started writing down everything that I have experienced here and have seen. Just to give you a quick idea, it is not the theater, the music, the money, the good life that makes this city attractive to me. It is its poor neighborhoods, the broken infrastructure, the homeless, the HIV positives, that makes this city so attractive to me. I volunteer with homeless and drug addicts, and I see the forces of change that makes one optimistic about the future (such forces are not found in many places). A future where everyone lives in peace.