The Singing Knights of Flatbush Avenue

Flatbush Avenue is a long, wide, busy road that runs across Brooklyn like a pulsating artery. A great river of concrete, she starts at the foothills of the Manhattan Bridge, flanked by posh neighborhoods and happy green parks and she extends in almost a perfectly straight line, diagonally, through progressively poorer parts of the sprawling borough. 

When you first meet her, near her crown, in prim Fort Greene and picturesque Brooklyn Heights, she decorates herself with tall offices. People don’t live on her. Swanky brownstone townhouses and elegant mid-century apartment buildings watch her from arm’s length, as if to respect her boundaries. At this point, she is far from home, she is just a runway to Manhattan over the water. 

But follow her down into Brooklyn for a little while and she changes. Prospect Park clothes her midriff and she becomes freer, more welcoming, more peaceful. Draped in greenery, air, and silence, she is able to breathe in Lefferts Gardens. This is when I love her the most. 

Eventually she succumbs to the relentless brick and colour and chaos of Flatbush itself, the birthplace that named her. Now she has people living on her hip, families scurrying across her thighs, shopkeepers scaling her knees to set up their fruit carts, smoking teenagers bouncing basketballs round her ankles. Her power spent, this great Goddess now blends into the rest of city. She becomes just another road. 

I am lucky enough to live in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, wedged between her waist and Prospect Park, and so I usually get see her happier side – her fleeting, leafy abdomen. On a purple, warm summer night she even lets me hear most sacred hymns. If you listen closely, when brutish engines are fast asleep, construction work has retreated, and the moon glistens from above, you can hear singing. It’s not her singing, it's her guardians. You can hear the singing Knights of Flatbush Avenue. 

Knights in Shining Armor 

Delivery workers are the unsung heroes of modern urban life. You press five buttons on your phone and food magically appears at your doorstep. Your phone spits out an order to a line cook somewhere, and 10 minutes later a waiter brings it to the front of the restaurant. And then at that very moment, no matter the weather or the man’s mood, a delivery driver parks his bike, walks in off the street, picks up your silly salad or precious pizza and brings it across town to you as fast as he can. 

He braves the traffic, the rain, the snow, the wind, the night, the potholes, the rats, the dogs, the confusing building buzzer systems, the weary glares from patrons of fancy elevators, the chance that his bike is stolen, the likelihood that he’ll someday twist an ankle on a slipper staircase, the lottery of an immigrant life, and many other dangers that you and I have long since forfeited. 

How many times have you really talked to your delivery guy? Have you ever had a conversation with the man who brings you noodles when you’ve had a hard day and you don’t feel like cooking? Have you ever wondered what a hard day might look like for him? Have you ever wondered what life would look like if you were delivering dim sum to his home, handing hot, heavy plastic bags to his hungry children? 

I don’t mean to shame you, because I have not honoured these men either. I too have not heard their voices, perhaps because I’m scared of what they’ll say.

 I remember once seeing 20 road-worn e-bikes stacked side by side outside a busy restaurant. That image struck me because I’d never seen so many delivery bikes together at the same time. You usually see one or two. But there were 20 there that day. How many different languages must the riders of those 20 bikes speak? How many different smiles and grimaces and laughs? Laughter sounds different in different languages. 20 men, 20 life stories of courage, hard work, and humility. 20 mothers, 20 wives, 20 decisions to come to America. 20 voices we might never hear. 

This is a love letter to those men, whose courage I will never have. The men to whom we owe our comfort. The Knights of late-stage capitalism, who bring us food we are too lazy even to go pick up, let alone cook. In the winter especially, they look like gladiators of the concrete jungle. With their visors up, their helmets betray wide-eyed glances, even beneath N95 masks. Their darting eyes are eyes of men at work: dinner time for us, when we reward ourselves after a hard day of staring at Zoom screen, is their busiest hour. How hard our lives are: sometimes when Zoom doesn’t work, we have to use Teams! Yes, we deserve the sweet release of Uber Eats. We’ve had a hard day! 

See him standing in the hallway in his suit of armor. His helmet, his winter jacket, the big gloves to keep his knuckles warm, the plastic dagger in his right hand with its brightness set to maximum, a luminous cocktail of Google Maps and delivery apps telling him which kingdom next. If the building’s elevator is broken he climbs the stairs, all the stairs, it doesn’t matter how many. So forgive him his panting, allow him to leave without saluting you. Pay him for his services, thank him for his generosity, and remember that the steam still coming off ramen rises because of him. He keeps your food hot while you stay warm. You are but one damsel he’s saved tonight, he has many more elevator-less castles to storm, more concrete moats to cross. 

Who are these men that ride their iron steeds up and down our ungrateful streets? They fly along both modest Flatbush Avenue and sparkling Madison Avenue. They charge into battle whether it’s a cascading rainstorm or a swirling blizzard. I saw a guy today – trudging through snow knee-high and -15°C with wind-chill – lift his scooter into his shoulder and carry it from the curb to the store front. Someone, somewhere had ordered something; it hadn’t occurred to them that this man would be have to trek through snowfall so new it was still being shoveled and salted by man and machine alike. Someone was blissfully ignorant that summoning their delivery genie would make this Knight carry his horse on his back. They ignored the consequences of that little indulgence and minutes later, our hero was called into action. Among many cruelties our Knights must bear is the cruelty of our ignorance. 

I extend my awe not just to the men who deliver our food, but all the service workers upon whose shoulders we sprout one modern comfort after another. Since I moved to the US in 2015, I have been served by delivery drivers and grocery store workers and Uber drivers and armies of other men and women who have never once – not once – lifted an eye in discontent, raised a voice in indignation, or waved a finger in malice. It is astounding. These heroes, I guess, are mostly lower-income, first-generation immigrants from developing countries who must be experiencing a cacophony of daily stresses I scan scarcely imagine. But I’ve never seen them project it upon a customer or rise to provocation. In fact, I’ve seen the opposite quite regularly. 

I remember an incident in my grocery store, on a sweltering summer day when the community’s patience was already frayed. This lady walks up to the deli counter. She was not wearing a mask – maybe the only person out of 50 in the store walking around like she had some special privilege. The deli counter is not rocket science: you tell the guy what you want. You can even just blurt out the item number of the sandwich scribbled on the blackboard above you. 

But this woman had questions. She was confused and loud and asked a vague, cryptic question about whether she could combine ingredients from one sandwich with another. The guy behind the counter was Latino. He didn’t understand her question but no one, including me, in line behind her understood her question either, because it was a strange and convoluted request. She asked again, with new condescension. Again he looked at her, perplexed, and tried to understand what she was saying. 

“Uhh, can I get someone who speaks English?” she then demanded, turning around as if to elicit agreement from people passing by. I felt a surge of anger. 

I hated her in that moment. Her arrogance, her bigotry. My mask hid my scowl and my cowardice stopped me from standing up for him. But he didn’t need anyone to stand up for him. He responded with the most dignified three words, saying all that he needed to and more. 

He calmly said, “I speak English.” 

Not only had he de-escalated the situation, but he proved his valor and upheld the dignity of his house. Embedded in those three words, was a belief that he was in the right, that his background would not hold him back, that he belonged in that grocery store as much as anyone. She didn’t know what to say. She blathered some profanities, whipped around, and left in a huff. 

That she was African American was not lost on him, me, or anyone else in the store. Had she been white, the episode may have caused a bigger scene. In the end, no one really paid attention and he went back to his business, confiding in his colleagues standing next to him. Beneath the veneer of urban co-existence, the aspiration towards multi-ethnic harmony and racial utopia, lie complex histories and wounds untended. 

Midnight Crooner 

But alas, you were reading this blog to hear about the singing Knights and so I will taunt you no longer. Meet him now, the singing Knight of Flatbush Avenue. The first time I heard him, was a clear night last July. I was walking home from my friend’s apartment on the other side of the park, and I strolled along Flatbush Avenue. 

I love the night sky in a city. A city sky can be totally quiet, but it is never totally black. It is never fully night, it’s only some shade of purple. And a purple sky reminds you that no matter how late the hour, you are not alone. Someone else is always out there gazing up at the sky too; dreams lighting up the darkness. 

It was under this night sky, walking by hue of streetlamps, that I heard him singing faintly as he glided towards me. I was walking on the pavement and I saw him, a shadow in the distance, fizzing in my direction in the bike lane just an arm’s length away from me. E-bike engines create, at most, a low hum and so as this Knight sped near me I could hear him crooning with joyous abandon. 

I think he was singing in Bengali? His phone’s feeble speakers were playing accompanying music and he belted out a sweet serenade at the top of his lungs. He had only one hand on the handlebar, his other was stretched out as if he was the lead in an opera performing for a baying crowd. 

Who was he singing to? Was he serenading Flatbush Avenue or some other sweet maiden? Where was she? When had he last seen her? Had he sung like this when they first met? When would he sing to her again? 

Something had given him the freedom, the audacity to sing that night. In New York City, you are conditioned to occupy only your little slice of airspace, no matter your standing in society. You are taught to stay in your lane, to not intrude upon anyone else’s real estate, and most definitely never to sing. But something had emboldened his spirit that night. It was late so perhaps he was heading home after hours on job and he just needed to release some energy. It was like he’d been biding his time and now the stage was all his. His voice rang out across the empty street, the shadowy park, the purple night air. He didn’t care that I saw him. He wanted the city to hear. 

I remember it to this day because it was the first time I saw one of my beloved Knights without their armor. I caught a glimpse of his face as he zipped past me. He was beaming. Wind in his hair. It was only a second but I saw the joy in his eyes. He was part of this city just like me, just like you. And though he must often wait to sing his piece, we will hear him sooner or later.