The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
The bus was moving again.
The rain had eased, but London is one of those cities where even when it isn’t raining, you feel that a few drops are waiting somewhere in the air to fall on your head.
The monarchist had gone quiet.
Perhaps he was tired.
Or perhaps he had realised this wasn’t the right bus for restoring a throne.
The donkey, who had been flicking his ears at every remark a few minutes earlier, now rested his head against the window.
I watched him in the mirror.
— Tired at last?
He gave a short bray.
— Fair enough. Iranian politics doesn’t only exhaust people. It wears out donkeys too.
Lena laughed.
The woman in red smiled as well, but her smile quickly faded.
She was looking outside.
We passed along a narrow street. The shops were switching on their lights one by one. People walked beneath umbrellas, and the lights stretched across the wet tarmac.
Suddenly the woman in red rose from her seat.
— Stop!
I put my foot on the brake.
— What’s happened?
She did not answer. She only pointed to the other side of the street.
A woman stood beneath the shelter of a bus stop.
She might have been a few years older than the woman in red. She wore a dark raincoat and a red scarf around her neck.
We had gone a few metres past the stop.
— We’ve passed it, I said.
— Go back.
I looked at her.
For the first time since she had boarded, I heard something like an order in her voice.
— Madam, this is a double-decker bus, not a bicycle. I can’t simply turn the handlebars and go back.
— Find a way, Lena called from behind us.
— Don’t you start.
The donkey brayed.
— And don’t you say a word. I haven’t seen your driving licence yet.
I pulled over a little farther on.
The woman in red was still looking back through the window.
The woman beneath the shelter had seen us.
But she did not move.
— If she wants to get on, she’ll have to come here. I can’t drive this bus onto the pavement to fetch her.
The woman in red laid a hand on the glass.
For a few moments, nobody spoke.
At last the other woman stepped out from under the shelter.
She had no umbrella.
She walked slowly towards us.
The closer she came, the more I noticed something I had missed at first.
Her eyes.
I could not say why they looked familiar.
I glanced in the mirror.
The woman in red was still standing.
Then I looked outside again.
The same eyes.
Not exactly.
But there was something shared in the way they looked at you.
I opened the door.
The woman set a foot on the first step and looked inside.
First she saw me.
Then Lena.
Then the monarchist.
Then Coco.
And finally the donkey.
She studied him for a few seconds.
— Is he a passenger too?
— No. At the moment he’s on the board of directors.
Lena burst out laughing.
Even the monarchist laughed.
But the woman in red did not.
The newcomer came up another step.
Her eyes met the woman in red’s.
She stopped.
The bus fell silent.
Even the donkey stopped braying.
The two women looked at one another.
Not like strangers.
Not like friends.
Not even like two people glad to see each other.
There was something between joy and hurt in their gaze, the sort of thing you see only between people who were once very close.
— Is it you? the newcomer said softly.
— It’s me.
— I never thought I’d see you.
— Neither did I.
The newcomer touched her red scarf, then glanced at the woman in red’s clothes.
She gave the smallest smile.
— Still red?
— You haven’t quite given it up yourself, apparently.
The newcomer said nothing.
My hands were still on the wheel.
— Forgive me for interrupting this historic moment, but if the lady’s getting on, I’ll close the door. All of London is coming inside.
The newcomer climbed aboard.
I shut the door.
— Destination?
— I don’t know.
I lowered my head onto the steering wheel.
— Another one!
Lena laughed.
— Why another one?
— Because everyone who gets on this bus either has no destination, has a past, has a file, or is looking for someone. Can’t one person say, ‘I’m just going to the next square’?
The newcomer laughed for the first time.
Her laugh was familiar too.
The woman in red looked at her.
Something in her face gave way, just for an instant.
But I saw it.
I knew that look: the look of somebody suddenly faced with a part of life they have tried to keep shut in a drawer for years.
The newcomer did not come forwards.
She sat in one of the seats at the back.
The woman in red sat down again too, but she did not reopen her book.
I set the bus in motion.
Nobody spoke for several minutes.
In the mirror I looked from one woman to the other.
Their resemblance was clearer now.
Not only the eyes.
The movements of their hands.
The way they sat.
Even when both looked out of the window, they tilted their heads at almost the same angle.
Lena had noticed it too.
— Do you know each other? she asked gently.
— Yes, said the newcomer.
— Years ago, said the woman in red at almost the same moment.
The words ‘years ago’ hung in the air.
Lena asked nothing more.
Neither did I.
If you ask some questions too soon, the answers become small. You have to let them hang there for a while.
A few streets later, I stopped at a red light.
In the mirror, the newcomer was still looking outside.
At last the woman in red said:
— How are you?
— Fine.
— Really?
— After all this time, that’s your first question?
The woman in red fell silent.
The newcomer went on:
— I thought if we ever saw each other again, we’d have so much to say.
— So did I.
— Then why aren’t you saying anything?
The woman in red put a hand on her book.
— Because I don’t know where to begin.
The light turned green and I drove on.
— That was always our problem. Neither of us knew where to begin. In the end, we never began at all.
There was no humour left on the bus.
Even I said nothing.
— How many years has it been? the woman in red asked quietly.
— You ought to know better than me.
— I stopped counting.
— I didn’t.
Silence.
Then the woman in red said:
— It wasn’t all my fault.
The newcomer did not answer at once.
She studied her for a few moments.
— I didn’t say it was.
That was enough to tell me a story lay behind the silence.
Not a simple row.
Not the sort of disagreement that ends after two phone calls and a cup of black coffee.
Family can be the strangest battlefield in the world.
You know where you stand with a stranger who is your enemy. But what do you do with someone you love and who has hurt you?
— Some things were out of my hands, said the woman in red.
— Some things weren’t, said the newcomer.
Lena lowered her head quietly.
Even the monarchist, uncharacteristically, kept out of it.
Coco rose, walked between the seats and sat beside the newcomer.
She stroked his head.
— At least somebody here accepts a person without questions.
— Don’t be so sure. Coco examines people first, then makes up his mind.
She smiled.
So did the woman in red.
For a few seconds, the invisible wall between them grew a little lower.
But it was still there.
We reached the next junction.
— I’ll get off at the next stop, the newcomer said suddenly.
The woman in red turned round at once.
— Already?
— I wasn’t meant to get on at all.
— Then why did you?
The woman looked at her.
— Perhaps I wanted to see what you would do when you saw me after all these years.
— And did you?
— Not yet.
The woman in red shifted aside and patted the empty seat next to her.
— Come here.
The newcomer looked at her.
Several seconds passed.
She stood and slowly made her way forwards between the seats.
When she reached the woman in red, she stopped.
The woman in red pointed again to the seat beside her.
— Sit down.
— Are you sure?
— No.
She paused.
— But sit down.
The woman sat.
Their shoulders were close, but did not touch.
I watched them in the mirror.
By now I was almost certain.
But I said nothing.
The monarchist apparently could bear it no longer. He leant over and asked:
— Excuse me… are you two related?
The woman in red looked at him.
The newcomer looked at him too.
Then they looked at each other.
— We are, said the newcomer.
— She’s my sister, the woman in red said more quietly.
For a moment my hands stayed still on the wheel.
I looked in the mirror.
— Well, at last we’ve established one fact on this bus.
The donkey brayed from the back.
— Yes, you knew from the start. We humans always take a little longer to catch on.
This time both sisters laughed.
Not much.
But together.
Perhaps it was the first thing they had done together again in years.
The bus travelled on along a wet London street.
The two sisters sat side by side.
There were still years of silence between them.
Unsaid words.
Resentment.
Perhaps misunderstandings.
Perhaps wounds for which neither could hold the other wholly responsible.
But for the moment neither got off.
And I thought that perhaps some people do not need a table, a home or a family meeting to reconcile.
Sometimes all it takes is boarding, by mistake, a bus on a rainy evening whose driver doesn’t know where he is going either.
And a donkey in the back seat, of course.
To be continued…
Naser Kamali
London, on a bus whose destination is still unknown.
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