Who’s your Uber driver on the phone to? Welcome to the long, long diaspora phone call

The question of the week is: “who are Uber drivers always talking to on the phone?” It’s one that regularly surfaces on Reddit threads and social media and even, on a couple of occasions, in the office. It’s not my question (I know who they are talking to), but I think the fact that many people are so baffled by it tells us a lot about the separate worlds we occupy.

When you get a cab on a ride-hailing app, the chances that your driver will be on the phone is high. The conversation is almost always quiet, containing pauses so long that it often seems they are actually no longer on a call. But then comes a rejoinder, a laugh, an interjection, and the marathon continues.

For anyone of an immigrant background, the question of who they are talking to is absolutely no mystery. They are talking to us; their siblings, parents, cousins and friends. Sometimes the person on the end of the line is back home, other times they are in a western city also navigating the dislocations of immigrant life. The long phone call is a regular feature of diaspora lives, and even more so for those employed in long, solitary work such as cab driving. These conversations are about nothing and everything.

What are they talking about?

This is not an exhaustive list, but based on the calls I constantly field from friends and family, the content I receive in a follow-up call, and familiar themes from chats with drivers in Arabic (which I sometimes get drawn into), the subjects are remarkably consistent. The range includes family gossip, wedding updates, complaints about the cost of living in the west, advice on navigating complex immigration systems, extremely detailed health updates, and political analysis of whatever crisis is unfolding. These conversations can broadly be sorted into one of two categories: “serious technical resolution of a problem” or “shooting the breeze”.

In my experience, these beast mode long phone calls are between someone on a long shift, commute or drive, and a mother cooking in the kitchen. There is a languorous quality to the call. Time and conversational convention shift to accommodate long silences without explanation, as one person or the other breaks away to get on with something – dismount or park or blitz something in the food processor. Because the point is not the actual chat. It is a broadly phatic – that is to say language used for bonding – form of communication, an exercise in yearning and homesickness. It helps us bridge a gap between long distances and absences, and simulate a proximity that is so deeply longed for.

Why talk all through the working day?

The interminable phone call is an immigrant’s lifeline, now made cheap and stable by voice over IP (the ability to make calls on an internet connection). But it is also a feature of broader cultural and economic patterns. Western time is personal, individual, literally “me time”, something that is violated if demanded without permission. This time is parcelled out necessarily for decompression, for work, for leisure. In other cultures, time is social and public.

In Sudan, for example, there is no such thing as calling ahead before a visit. Your home is a drop-in destination from about 11am onwards. A neighbour will pop in for a chat, a relative will be driving home and swing by, and if there are children in the household, their own social lives mean you just never know how many people you are cooking for. The corner shop is a lifeline of last minute provision as numbers swell unexpectedly. If you are an introvert, good luck.

When that physical socialisation is impossible, the phone does the work. Certain conditions make the visit and the call possible. Homes where there is often a homemaker to receive, or work that does not require strict, in-office professional deportment and execution. Highly structured working environments and fast-paced modern lives mean that entire societies are firmly post-casual-phone-call. In these contexts, I find myself so wary of ambushing or alarming people with a call that I send a clear warning beforehand. No, there is nothing to worry about, and are you sure this is a good time to speak? Absolutely no worries if not.

But it is also a mindset, which you can lose over time. I find myself becoming increasingly post-phone call outside work, constantly thinking to myself that I will ring a relative back when I have the time. Generally, I prefer to message or voice note, conscious that when I return the call, it absolutely will not be a quick and efficient catch up. But, in truth, I do have the time, I have just assimilated the same rigid notions of downtime and non-urgent phone calls as an incursion. Fundamentally, this is an extremely capitalist notion of time as purely a function of work, where even if you are not working, you are “re-charging” in anticipation of more work.

Reclaiming the lost art of the ambling phone call

The fact that the long driver call is such a bewildering anomaly is a meeting of those two worlds. In one, a passenger cannot fathom that you might have so much to say to someone over the phone, because everyone you love or want to see is generally within your immediate social reach, and because it is unfathomable to dedicate so much of your precious bandwidth to seemingly aimless conversation. In another, loved ones are in a different country or sprawl all over the world, and without their constant companionship life is just alienation and monotonous work.

But I suspect there is more to the lost art of the phone call in certain societies than just the pressures of modernity. In contemporary life, there are so many ways to feel like you are in touch and in conversation when you are not. So many ways to feel part of some slipstream of humanity, when in fact we are scrolling, meme-ing, seeing news from friends and strangers alike via story updates, while not exchanging anything meaningful or even uttering a single word. Those in exile are acutely aware of alienation, and reach out to remedy it. But for those in their home countries, loneliness still lurks in ways harder to recognise. A phone call is honestly less time consuming and more replenishing than anything else we use our devices for.

Tap in

Do you have long, aimless phone calls? How do you think your preferred mode of communication connects to your culture? Share your thoughts by replying to this, or emailing us at thelongwave@theguardian.com and we may include your response in a future issue.

Diaspora discusses

Last week, we explored Britain’s fraught relationship with its historical role in enslavement. You shared your thoughts on the publication of the Register of British Slave Traders and the records of enslaved people, and mounting calls for recognition and reparations.

I started to search online for my enslaved ancestors for the first time and discovered that decades of British secrecy means I have no written records of my ancestors to start with. No names no approximate births or death dates. This legacy means I have a family left not literate enough to document their history. Ancient family members that don’t speak English. People who make up their new own names because their family names derived from the slavers. It’s great that we have this info but I wish there was more help in finding the people we want to know about.

Michelle B, based in Stroud, UK

The stories that a country tells itself make a huge difference. Kudos to Germany for making sure that the blot on their journey is never forgotten among their own. Former colonial powers would do well to teach history accurately – otherwise they risk forgetting the past rather than learning from it, and helping to correct the damage that was done while they enriched themselves for generations.

David P.A. Mullings, based in the US and Jamaica

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