Bleeding Edge, pp. 312-313

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

By contrasting Horst's 'whatever' with the Islamic cab driver's Inshallah,
Pynchon points out the Western weakness in the "clash of civilizations".


Am 16.11.2015 um 11:12 schrieb Mark Thibodeau:
Hm.

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 5:02 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de<mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:

   In the taxi on the way home, there's loud traffic in Arabic on the radio, which Maxine figures at first for a call-in show till the cabbie picks up a handset and joins in. She glances at the ID up on the Plexiglas. The face in the photo is too indistinct to make out, but the name is Islamic, Mohammed somebody.
   It's like hearing a party from another room, though Maxine notices there's no music, no laughing. High emotion all right, but closer to tears or anger. Men talking over each other, shouting, interrupting. A couple of the voices might be women's, though later it will seem they could have belonged to high-pitched men. The only word Maxine recognizes, and she hears it more than once, is Inshallah. "Arabic for 'whatever,'" Horst nods.
   They're waiting at a light. "If it is God's will," the driver corrects him, half turning in his seat so that Maxine happens to be looking him in the face. What she sees there will keep her from getting to sleep right away. Or that's how she'll remember it.



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