Wade into the taxi pool

Here, on an immense stretch of bare asphalt at the airport’s edge, the eyes passengers see reflected in rear-view mirrors and the voices muffled by plexiglass become whole people: Fascinating, tired, funny, loud, hungry, bored people. People who are engineers and students, moonlighters and lifers, fathers and grandfathers. People who come from everywhere and have seen everything.

Several hundred drivers at a time bring their Crown Vics and Camry Hybrids here so they can be dispatched to the terminals. They park in neat queues and wait for their numbers to come up on two large boards at the front of the giant lot.

These days, they wait a very long time.

“The other day I was in here for three hours,’’ said Donald Carasso, who has been driving for more than 30 years. “People aren’t traveling. I’m down 40 percent, at least.’’

They find ways to snuff out the minutes. Carasso jokes that he Twitters. Like a lot of guys - and almost all of them are guys - he tries to get some exercise, walking laps around the lot.

Everybody spends more time here than they used to. When business is good, the taxi pool is a far more transient place, its population completely transformed from hour to hour. Now these drivers practically live together.

On a freakishly sunny Monday, they stood in circles, or sat on curbs sucking on cigarettes, talking about politics, bellyaching about the in-taxi credit card machines that break down and cost them a fortune. So many of them sported Bluetooth ear pieces it was hard not to think of an army of jaded cyborgs.

Under the trees on one side of the lot, scores of drivers gathered around picnic tables. Russians played backgammon quietly at one table. A huge group of Africans and West Indians gathered around another, shouting and laughing as four players clacked down dominoes. The pace was lightning-fast: lose two games and a spectator takes your place.

Farther down the line, Pakistani and Indian drivers played a card game called “Bhabhi,’’ sister-in-law in Hindi, in which the object is to get rid of your cards. They played standing, whipping their cards onto the table. Tony Mannan got stuck with a full hand. He threw his cards down, and paid up, not in cash, but in deep-knee bends.

“Some guys lose on purpose, just for the workout,’’ he joked, falling into 10 painful-looking squats.

In the Taxi Pool Cafeteria, where the specials of the day included the always-popular chicken chili, baked chicken with curry rice, and corn on the cob, drivers sat at tables staring up at the television, tuned to CNN, or at the Keno screen. Two vending machines dispensed scratch tickets. Giant bottles of hot sauce and ground cumin graced the tables.

Is the food all right?

“It’s good for cab drivers, not for you,’’ said one driver. “We have low-level stomachs.’’

He wouldn’t give his name. Boston taxi drivers are a skittish bunch: Even some of the men who said innocuous things were afraid they would lose work if their names got into the paper.

Under a shelter across the lot, a dozen Muslim drivers from Morocco, Nigeria, Somalia, and other places knelt barefoot or in socks, facing Mecca and touching their foreheads to the ground in prayer. They used to pray on real carpets, but the rain and snow ruined them, so one of the brothers brought in plywood boards for prayer mats.

The drivers choose an imam from among themselves. At midday Monday, the call to prayer had been sung by a driver who identified himself only as Said the Moroccan.

“Some people don’t want to lead, so we have to push them a little,’’ he said.

And with that he apologized and sprinted through the queues to his cab. Said the Moroccan’s number had finally come up.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.