The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
The man’s question still hung in the middle of the bus:
— If you could go back to fifty-seven, would you still make a revolution?
We had passed several streets and I had yet to answer.
It wasn’t that I had no answer.
The trouble was that some questions have short answers, but their short answers are usually wrong.
At last the monarchist could stand it no longer.
— Well?
— Well what?
— Your answer.
— Which answer?
— The one you told me to save for the next stop.
I looked outside.
— We haven’t reached the next stop yet.
— You’ve passed two stops!
— Why didn’t you tell me? I’m the driver, not a historical tour guide.
The donkey brayed.
— If you knew the route, you should have said something sooner too.
The woman in red laughed.
But Lena was silent.
I knew she was waiting to hear what I would say.
At last I said:
— If I were twenty again, I’d begin by asking myself a question.
— What question? asked the man.
— Does the person I am today have the right to tell a young man living fifty years ago what to do?
He raised his eyebrows.
— What do you mean?
— I mean I know things today that he did not know.
— And perhaps you’ve forgotten things he knew, said the woman in red.
I looked at her.
— Such as?
— What being twenty feels like, for one.
I laughed.
— Good point.
— That’s precisely the difficulty, Lena said. — We judge the past with today’s experience, which the people of that time didn’t have.
— You’re dodging the question again, said the man.
— No. I’m getting closer to an answer. There’s no rush. Revolution isn’t a sandwich: you can’t just order it with sauce or without.
The donkey brayed.
— Did the word ‘sandwich’ wake you up?
The woman in red laughed.
Then I became serious.
— If the question is whether I would stand up to despotism again, my answer is clear: yes. But if the question is whether I would repeat every single thing that generation did, in exactly the same way, no.
— So you admit you made mistakes, the man said quickly.
— You do love that word!
Lena laughed.
— Is political life a school exam, with a teacher writing ‘wrong’ in red ink at the end?
— In the end it was either right or wrong.
— That way of looking at it is a problem in itself, Lena said.
He turned towards her.
— You can’t divide a historical experience into two columns marked ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. You might believe in the goal while criticising the way it was pursued. You might understand one contradiction and misunderstand another force. You might be brave but have a weak organisation. You might be devoted to the cause but not fully understand the society you’re trying to change.
— And you might love the future so much that you forget courage alone won’t build it.
— What else does it take? asked the woman in red.
I thought for a few moments.
— Patience.
— Organisation, said Lena.
— Freedom? said the woman in red.
— Certainly.
— Law, said the monarchist.
I looked at him in the mirror.
— At last you’ve contributed something to this revolution yourself.
He laughed.
The donkey brayed.
— What would you like to add?
He brayed again.
— We’ve already mentioned food.
Laughter spread through the bus.
Then the woman in red asked:
— Khalo, did you really believe you could change the world when you were twenty?
— Believe it?
I chuckled.
— I was almost certain!
Lena burst out laughing.
— Being twenty gives you one dangerous quality: you don’t yet know that some things are impossible. So sometimes you do them.
— And sometimes you make a mess of them, said the man.
— True.
He looked startled for a moment. Perhaps he hadn’t expected me to agree so easily.
— Youth isn’t only heroism. It’s impatience and oversimplification too. Sometimes you assume that because your own intentions are good, everyone beside you must want the same future you do.
— Yet a temporary political alliance doesn’t mean people have identical class interests, said Lena.
— Now we’re back to Marx, the man said.
Lena smiled.
— I hadn’t mentioned him yet.
— You brought him up yourself. You’re responsible for him now, I told the man.
He laughed.
Lena continued:
— In a crisis, different forces may stand together against a common power. But the next day their differences emerge. The crucial questions are: who is organised, who has a social base, who has the instruments of power, and who can turn their own programme into the dominant one?
— So a common enemy doesn’t necessarily make common friends, said the woman in red.
— Exactly.
— I wish I’d heard that sentence when I was twenty.
— If you could go back, what would you tell yourself? the man asked quickly.
This time I knew my answer.
— I’d say, ‘Khalo, my boy, slow down a little.’
The woman in red laughed.
— Just that?
— No. I’d tell myself to ask what a political ally wants to do the day after victory before trusting them.
Lena nodded.
— I’d say, ‘Don’t just ask who you’re with and whom you’re against. Ask what comes next.’
The man was no longer laughing.
Neither was I.
— I’d say, ‘Don’t postpone freedom.’
The woman in red looked at me.
— Don’t postpone justice either. Or women’s rights. Or the rights of those who disagree with you. Anything you promise to ‘sort out after victory’ may turn out to be the very thing you aren’t allowed to discuss the day after victory.
For a few moments, nobody spoke.
— Perhaps that’s one of the hardest lessons any revolution has to learn, Lena said softly.
— So the end doesn’t justify the means? asked the man.
— If you smother freedom in order to reach it, you ought to question where you’re going.
The woman in red closed her book.
— That isn’t only true of revolutions.
— No. It’s true of life as well.
— What if a young person sat in front of you today and said, ‘I want to change the world’? asked Lena.
— I’d say, ‘Start.’
The monarchist laughed.
— So you haven’t learnt anything!
— Wait. I haven’t finished.
The donkey brayed.
— See? Even he understands you have to let someone finish their sentence.
Then I said:
— I’d tell that young person to change the world, but not to imagine the world is sitting around waiting for their plan. Get to know it first. Read history and economics. Look at society. Talk to workers, talk to women, talk to people who disagree with you. And most of all, never put a leader or an organisation in place of your own judgement.
— Not even your own organisation, said Lena.
— Especially not your own.
— And if the party tells you to obey? asked the man.
— First you have to find out whether it wants a comrade or a soldier.
— What’s the difference?
— A comrade asks questions.
— A soldier follows orders, said Lena.
The donkey brayed.
I looked at him.
— You’re not joining any party for now. Your record of organisational discipline is terrible.
The woman in red laughed so hard that her book fell from her knees.
Coco raised his head at the sound.
The monarchist bent down, picked up the book and handed it back to her.
— One more question.
— You bought a ticket for one stop and you’ve asked enough questions for a whole university term.
— This is the last one.
— Go on.
He looked at me.
— After all these years, do you still think revolution is possible?
This time Lena did not look at me.
The woman in red said nothing either.
Even the donkey was silent.
The light turned red.
I stopped the bus.
Outside, people with umbrellas crossed the street. A young man held an older man’s hand. A woman wheeled her bicycle beside her. A little boy jumped into a puddle, and his mother said something I could not hear through the glass.
— As long as a society has contradictions, change is possible.
— I didn’t ask about change. I asked about revolution.
I looked at him.
— A revolution isn’t only the day people take to the streets.
— Sometimes it starts years before that, Lena said quietly.
— In the factory. At university. At home. In the mind of somebody who asks for the first time why things have to be as they are.
The light turned green.
The bus moved on.
— So you’re still that same twenty-year-old? asked the man.
I laughed.
— No.
— What have you become, then?
I looked at the road.
— The same young man, with fifty more years of bills to pay.
The woman in red laughed.
— And apparently you still haven’t paid them, said Lena.
— That’s why I’m still working.
The donkey gave a loud bray.
— Don’t worry. Your hay bill is separate.
Everyone laughed.
But I looked at my face in the mirror.
For a moment I imagined I could see that young man behind it.
Not as he really had been.
As memory preferred to keep him.
A young man who believed that if the world was unjust, enough people deciding to change it would be all it took.
Today I knew the work was harder than that.
Power was more complicated.
Society was more complicated.
People were more complicated.
But I had never taken one thing away from that young man:
The belief that no order is eternal simply because it has lasted many years.
Suddenly the monarchist said:
— Now it’s my turn.
— Your turn to do what?
He smiled.
— You’ve spent an hour talking about your revolution. Perhaps I ought to tell you why, after all these years, I still call myself a monarchist.
Lena looked at him.
The woman in red sat up straight.
I watched him in the mirror.
The donkey pricked up his ears too.
— Very well.
I gestured towards the donkey.
— Just be careful. Your toughest political opponent is sitting opposite you.
The man laughed.
But this time it was clear that what he had to say was no laughing matter.
The bus turned into another street.
And for the first time since the man had got on, none of us prepared an answer before hearing him out.
To be continued…
Naser Kamali
London, my small, cosy room.
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