I called him for this project and the idea I had was to accompany him as he drives his cab at night in Philadelphia and the interaction with his passengers - just a sense of life in the cab driving in Philadelphia. Well, a few days before the shoot, I called him and he told me he just stopped driving a cab. Well, I had nothing to go on and that's how this piece started. Now I wasn't sure what his piece was going to be and in a way it's what cinéma verité is all about - you dive in and just hope your equipment doesn't let you down - it's reacting to what happens and just being there.

There are a few things going on within Balde's piece but to me what stands out the most is a visual of someone caught in a no-man's land as we immigrants find ourselves whether we are cognizant of it or are in severe denial. America 'will never be my home' he says and sometimes when Americans hear this sort of a remark, they think it's a rejection of their culture. For some reason there's this perception here in America that people emigrate here to be 'American'. No, they don't! They come here because of a situation that forced them out. So, it's understandable when Balde says that he feels America is 'not for him' - it's not his. He is a foreigner. Ok, that's one side. But, you also heard him say that when he went back to Guinea, a land he left 35 years ago, they say he is 'Western' and he himself can't understand how they work, how they do business. That, to me is the embodiment of the dislocating immigrant experience. Neither here nor there. So what is he to do? He says 'je dois rentre avant mourir' - to return home before dying. It's easy to see that he wants to buried back home and doesn't want to be here when the time comes - that gives you the depth of this sense of being in a no-man's land. That you have to hurry home - for the ultimate.

Well, when I say immigrant I should really qualify and say 'first-generation' because once we 'first-generation' immigrants have children then the children are 'hyphenated' Americans and they will never face this dilemma. They are Americans with varying depths of understanding of their heritage but they are American nonetheless. To take you back to Siddiq, when I went to his home to review his piece with him, his 10-year old daughter interrupted to say - Well, if Siddiq does a 5 minute piece now and you keep working with him and soon you will make a 10 minute piece and then a full documentary about him, and then he will make a lot of money! Siddiq looked at her smiling and said 'She is American'. Not us, we're not. We may be undocumented, documented, residents or naturalized US Citizens, but still we're not 'American'. So, where are we and where do we go from here? This is Balde's dilemma that keeps him awake at night. This is what makes him reminisce playing the flute for his herd when he was a boy. Those are the memories of our earlier past in the land of our ancestors - relegated to romantic dreams - only to be awakened by the unstopping ebb and flow of traffic in our new found cities that we call home - for now.