If Forrest Gump ever got to Abu Dhabi, he could tell you:

Riding in a cab here is like a box of chocolates.

You never know what kind of driver will pick you up. Indian, Filipino, Syrian, Indonesian, Bangladeshi, Afghan, Egyptian, Yemeni, Nepalese …

Today, I got a Pakistani who wishes he were in America … but the government won’t let him in.

Generally, most cabbies don’t talk. Their English isn’t good enough, and they know you can’t speak their language, and so nobody bothers. The two of you sit there and look out the windows.

But about one out of five … will chat me up.

It almost invariably begins with, “Where are you from?”

(The second-most question asked in this town: “How long have you been here?” Followed by “What do you do?” and “How old are you?” and “How much do you make?” We’re all pretty direct here; we don’t stand on ceremony.)

Sometimes,  a cabbie is genuinely interested in your home. I generally tell them “near Los Angeles … in California …” and most of them seem to have an idea.

Generally, however, they want you to ask them about where they live. And then they swell with pride and tell you, with the utmost sincerity, how much nicer it is in their homeland or home city than it is in Abu Dhabi (we’re almost all chauvinists when it comes to our native lands, aren’t we?)  … and how they would like to go back but how they can’t afford it yet.

That was the case with Khaled. He appeared to be about 30, and is from Karachi, one of Pakistan’s leading cities. It is on the southern coast. Most of the Pakistani cab drivers here seem to come from Peshawar, a city near the Afghan border known for political and social conservatism and religious piety.

Karachi apparently is a bit more secular and cosmopolitan, and Khaled had more of a metro-style slickness to him. He spent money on his haircut, and he was clean-shaven (beards and head-coverings of some sort are far more common), and his English was a bit better than the run of guys.

I asked him about Karachi. And he would like to go back. It is a beautiful city, he said. It has four weathers, he said,  meaning “four seasons” — unlike some other parts of Pakistan, he said. But it rarely snows there, unlike major cities in the north, like Islamabad.

Why is he here? For the money, of course. He has been here a year.

He doesn’t know when he will go back to Karachi. He is a bit pessimistic. “The government and the military don’t care about the people,” he said. “Things are not good. It is better here.”

I asked him if it was safe to visit Pakistan, and he was blunt. (And keep in mind that almost everyone here will tell you that his home country is perfectly safe for Western tourists, including Americans,  and actually think you ought to go, asap, actually.) He said, “no. Not now. Maybe someday.”

He then told me that his mother lives in New York. As does his sister. Yes, they find it to be quite cold there sometimes.

Toward the end of our ride, he made a proclamation. I could understand the words “gentlemen” and “criminal” but I didn’t quite get it all. “Your government” was in there, too. I said, “excuse me?”

And he tried again, and this time I got it. He was saying the U.S. government doesn’t distinguish between “criminals and gentlemen” when it comes to its immigration policies. Gentlemen such as himself. Khaled.

His mother, he said, has a Green card. His sister is a U.S. citizen. Yet he cannot get a visa. He can’t get into the “send me your huddled masses” country. He can’t join his mother and sister. In New York, where it is cold.

We were turning the corner to the Teeny Apartment. I tried to give him the Cliffs Notes version of U.S. foreign policy. That Americans know that very, very few people from Egypt or Yemen or Pakistan want to kill Americans … but that it is easier just to say “no” to everyone rather than get to know the Khaleds of the world and realize he is “a gentleman” who works for a living and misses his mother and sister and would like to better himself.

I’m sure he already knew this. And he was just pointing out that the blanket nature of traveling bans in The Age of Terror ensnares infinitely more regular guys — gentlemen — than criminals. I don’t think he was blaming me.

Actually, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. As he dropped me off, he handed me a card with his name and phone number on it. “Any time you need a ride, call me,” he said. I kept the card.