I am constantly amazed at the scenarios and the people that I encounter on the bus here in Israel. It seems like every essay I write is somehow influenced by my bus travels. I think it’s because on a bus, you simply have time to think. And watch. And hear. And see the same things over and over again. And realize that sometimes the things that you think are distanced from you are in fact the every-day, well-known, well-loved bits of your life.
My morning starts with the smell of ______. I would like to fill this blank with a variety of nice-smelling things--coffee, doughnuts, flowers, vanilla--but in fact the answer is . . . old urine. While my house is situated on a beautiful side-street with flowers, grapevines, and enough cats to film another segment of “Planet of the Apes” (except with cats, of course), my bus stop leaves a bit to be desired. It’s next to a parking lot that people seem to have mistaken for a public restroom. What I realize each morning as I stand in the place as far away as possible from the smell (Note: This location changes each morning depending on wind speed and direction) is that my life is filled with people whose names I don’t know.
The first two people I encounter each morning after leaving my little street are a Philipino man and a cranky teenage girl.
The Philipino man wears a baseball-cap and he’s a caretaker for an elderly religious man. He hasn’t told me, but I’m sure that’s what he does. Here in Jerusalem, that’s what you do if you are Philipino. You care for elderly religious Jews with money. You spend your days speaking English and your nights off speaking Tagalag.
The teenage girl, well, she’s a bit more of a character. She--in all her I’m-too-cool-for-this-place glory--has the ability to gross me out anew each morning. You see, she likes to wear her pants too big--hanging down over her shoes--and think she’s somehow original for a high-schooler. The part that grosses me out is the bubble gum that she chews. I think she first sees the scared look on my face. Then, and only then, does she pull the saliva-covered hot-pink gum from her mouth and begin to twirl it around her fingers, swinging it around and around and around. With each revolution, the look on my face exhibits more disgust. Eventually, I turn away and see the bus (Wait! My bus!) pass me without stopping.
The next person I meet, or in this case fail to meet, is the bus driver who passes me by without stopping if I’m not standing exactly next to the urine-smell bus stop. He’s--how should I say this?--not exactly my friend.
In the next 14 minutes, while I wait for the number 7 bus to pass again, I do one of two things:
1) Respond, “Fine” to the obligatory, “How are you?” asked by the male twenty-something bus security guards who speak only to men with dark skin or girls between the age of 20-27.
OR
2) Say, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Russian” in both Hebrew and English to the Russian-speaking individuals who stop to ask me directions and because of my complexion and appearance assume that I too am from the far reaches of Moscow.
I board the number 7 bus eventually and see my favorite driver. At the next stop, the two blonde supermodel types (Are they Swedish?) get off at the stop near the shuk (open fruit and vegetable market). There’s a chance they are doing a photo shoot at the market, but unless raw fish and falafel stands are the up-and-coming place for photo shoots in the modeling world, my guess is that they are the common German-tourist volunteers and they are working in the soup kitchen there.
As we stop near the market, a black-clad religious man and his school-uniformed daughter board the bus. They are loaded down with plastic bags full of fruits and vegetables. As we pull up to the central bus station, one of the stops on the route, an onion rolls past me and a woman in seat facing the back positions her feet and blocks it with the ease of a seasoned soccer player. I see she’s played “Shuk Onion” before.
The next person of interest is the religious man with Down’s syndrome I see waiting at the stop at the beginning of the ultra-religious neighborhood we drive through on my way to work. I don’t speak to him. We don’t even ride the same bus, but I can’t help but wonder where he’s going every morning.
Suddenly, a grapefruit hits my foot, and I look up just in time to see my favorite person on the bus--a little baby being swung around by his loving father as if he’s a tennis racquet. He’s by far my favorite because, well, he wears the best kind of pajamas invented (the kind with the little footies), and he sleeps through everything as we make our way through speed bumps, construction, school children, and more.
By now we’ve reached the next to last stop of the route, and everyone but me and the guy who’s fallen asleep gets off. The driver talks to himself, now that there is a bit of quiet. Once, he looked up in surprise when he saw me sitting in the back. By now, he knows I’m still there, but I guess he trusts me enough to reveal his secrets.
As I get off the bus, making sure not to forget my packed lunch in the seat next to me, I think to myself, “Am I ready for today?” I think, “Where did all those people go? What are they doing?” And then I think, “How would they describe me--the girl whose name they don’t know?”
She’s the girl who wears the silly glasses, who sits listening to her MP3 player. The girl who smiles when she receives a text message from her new boyfriend, the girl who is making her way to work in an English-speaking microcosm in this crazy little country. She wore an orange backpack until the zipper broke, and now, she’s changed for something a little more toned-down. She’s nice enough. She’s calm enough. She’s pretty enough. She’s . . . well . . . we don’t know her name, but that’s ok. We’ll see her tomorrow.
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