The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
The newcomer sat beside her sister.
I put my hands back on the wheel and the bus moved off slowly.
We had gone only a few metres when I caught her eye in the mirror.
She was watching me.
Not the way someone watches a bus driver to check whether he has his eyes on the road. More closely than that.
For a moment our eyes met in the mirror.
I immediately looked back at the street.
A few seconds passed.
I checked the mirror again.
She was still looking at me.
Either she had seen me somewhere before, I thought, or she was already suspicious of my driving.
The donkey gave a short bray from the back.
— Don’t interfere just yet. She hasn’t been on board five minutes and you’re already the public relations inspector?
Laughter went round the bus.
The newcomer laughed too, but did not look away from the mirror.
Then she turned to her sister.
— I don’t know why, but the driver’s face is very familiar to me.
— I hope it isn’t from the police station.
She laughed louder this time.
— No… I mean it. I think I’ve seen you before.
I looked at her more carefully now.
Her face was not entirely unfamiliar to me either.
But it was the kind of familiarity you cannot immediately give a date and place to. More like a voice you heard years ago and cannot remember which room it came from.
— It’s possible. People in exile sometimes spend years circling one another without ever quite meeting.
Lena, who had been quiet until then, said:
— Or perhaps they meet without ever really knowing one another.
The woman in red closed her book.
I knew that when she closed it, a new discussion was about to begin on the bus. She gave me a mischievous look and a mischievous smile appeared on her face. It was a smile, certainly, though I couldn’t quite say what sort.
The newcomer looked at me again.
— Perhaps I’ve read something you’ve written.
— Then things are worse than I thought.
— Why?
— Because someone who has read my writing and then recognises me will probably say, ‘So the writer of all those disappointments is here too.’
There was a brief silence.
Then I added:
— Whereas after all these years, I’m still not sure whether I write about nihilism or hope, especially after the sad thing that happened to me.
The donkey brayed.
— He, of course, believes he knows me perfectly.
Laughter returned to the bus.
But the newcomer was still watching me.
A little later she suddenly said:
— Don’t you discuss politics on Rangarang television on Wednesdays?
I was a little startled.
It wasn’t only that she had finally recognised me. I was more interested to learn that she watched London’s Rangarang television, which Mr Mahmoud Sarabi has run in London for years and which I regard as an independent outlet.
I looked in the mirror again.
But I didn’t answer.
I don’t know why.
Perhaps it was one of those moments when, before replying, you want to see yourself for a few seconds through somebody else’s eyes.
A woman who, only minutes earlier, had thought of me merely as the driver of a peculiar bus had now pulled me out of another box.
Television.
The donkey.
The bus.
Politics.
London.
Life has a remarkable talent for mixing things that seem to have nothing to do with one another. Perhaps they do, after all.
— Was I wrong? she asked.
— No.
— So it is you?
— It depends.
— On what?
— If you mean the man who sits in front of a camera on Wednesdays talking politics, yes. If you mean the driver of this bus, unfortunately yes again.
The donkey brayed.
— And if you mean this gentleman’s owner, I deny it categorically. We’re only colleagues.
The newcomer laughed.
Her sister laughed too.
Even Lena smiled.
But the monarchist, as he called himself, merely looked at me.
— At last we know why your face was familiar to her, said the woman in red.
— We do. What we still don’t know is why anyone would sit down on Wednesdays to look at my face.
— I don’t watch every time, the newcomer said.
— That’s a relief.
— But I’ve seen a few of your discussions.
This time I said nothing.
The street was wet, and the lights stretched over the tarmac.
The windscreen wiper moved back and forth across the glass with weary regularity.
— Interesting, said the newcomer.
— What is?
— You’re different here from the person I see on television.
— I hope the other one is better-looking.
— That’s not what I meant.
— Wiser, then, I hope.
— I’m serious.
I glanced at the mirror.
— So am I. When you see yourself on television, you sometimes wonder whether the person on the screen is really you or a distant relative using your name without permission.
— But it’s an interesting question, said the woman in red.
— Which one?
— Which of the two is more real? The man who discusses politics in front of a camera, or the man here arguing with his donkey?
The donkey immediately brayed.
— Objection recorded. He maintains it’s an argument between two parties.
Everyone laughed.
But her question stayed with me.
Which was more real?
The man in front of the camera?
The man behind the wheel?
The one who wrote articles?
The one who grew lonely at night and, in his solitude, visited everyone in his thoughts until his heart longed to fly?
The one who joked?
Or the same man who sometimes did not speak for hours?
— Perhaps neither one on its own is the whole person, said Lena.
The newcomer looked at her.
— We tend to build somebody’s entire character from one piece of their life. We see them on television and think we know them. Read their writing and think we know them. Argue with them for ten minutes and perhaps even decide what kind of person they are.
— But surely the way someone behaves tells us something about them? asked the woman in red.
— Yes. But not everything.
— Fortunately, I said.
— Why fortunately? asked the newcomer.
— Because if people could know all of me from a single television programme, my seventy years of living would have been a terrible waste.
Laughter spread through the bus again.
But I didn’t laugh this time.
Only after saying it did I hear something in my own words.
How much of our lives do we spend constructing an image of ourselves for others?
And how often do they mistake that image for us?
Political person.
Writer.
Lonely man.
Migrant.
Exile.
Former prisoner.
Father.
Friend.
Lover.
Enemy.
Driver.
Everyone picks up one of those labels and imagines they’ve read the entire file.
Yet perhaps a human being begins just where the labels end.
— You’re much more serious on television, the newcomer said.
— I have to be. If I brayed at another guest in the middle of a political discussion, they probably wouldn’t invite me back.
The donkey brayed so loudly that even I couldn’t keep from laughing.
— See? He’s just offered himself as my replacement.
— Perhaps he’d draw more viewers too, said Lena.
— I didn’t expect that from you, comrade.
— I’ll certainly watch his first programme, said the woman in red.
— Very well. The revolution has started inside the bus. We haven’t reached our destination and you’ve already replaced the driver.
The newcomer was laughing.
Then she grew quiet.
— Seeing you close up, I feel the man I saw on television was only one part of you.
— Probably.
— Do you play a part in front of the camera, then?
This time I answered quickly:
— No.
I paused.
— Playing a part isn’t the same as showing one part of yourself.
They fell silent.
— When I speak about politics, what I say is mine. But I’m not putting my whole life on the table in that moment. Just as you wouldn’t say that someone who cries before a crowd at a gathering has no sense of humour merely because they aren’t laughing then.
Lena nodded.
— A person doesn’t have only one role. Different circumstances reveal different sides of them.
— But some people spend years making one face for themselves, said the woman in red, — until eventually they believe that’s all they are.
— That’s more dangerous still.
— Why? asked the newcomer.
— Because you aren’t only deceiving other people. You’ve become a viewer of your own programme.
For a few moments nobody spoke.
Not even the donkey.
I looked at him in the mirror.
His head was down.
— Why have you gone quiet?
He gave a short bray.
— Very well, I agree. You’re more honest than any of us. When you’re upset, you bray; when you’re happy, you bray; and when you have no opinion, you bray anyway.
— He has a simple life, said the newcomer.
— Quite the opposite. We haven’t learnt his language yet. For all we know, he’s giving a lecture on the identity crisis of modern humanity right now.
— And you’re censoring him, said Lena.
— Look how far we’ve come! Five minutes ago I was a driver, then interpreter for His Excellency the Donkey, and now I’m a censor.
The bus reached a red light.
I stopped.
The rain had grown a little heavier.
People passed in front of us beneath umbrellas, each with a face, a story and a past.
It suddenly occurred to me that we may see hundreds of lives every day without even noticing them.
The old man crossing the road might once have been passionately in love.
The woman carrying a shopping bag might have made a decision the night before that would change her whole life.
The young man with headphones might have come from a country he can never return to.
But to us they are all merely ‘passers-by’.
Just as, a few minutes ago, I had been merely ‘the driver’ to the newcomer.
The light turned green.
I drove on.
— Perhaps this is where the trouble begins.
— Where? asked the woman in red.
— When we think people are only what we’ve seen of them.
— Or what we’ve heard about them, said Lena.
— Or what they were years ago, said the newcomer.
I looked at her.
That last thought caught my attention.
— That’s the most important of all.
— Why? asked the woman in red.
— Because sometimes we freeze people at a single point in time. Someone made a mistake twenty years ago, and to us they’re still the same person. Someone loved us once, and we imagine they must always feel that way. Someone parted from us, and we expect to meet them thirty years later and resume the very same conversation we left unfinished.
— Yet neither of you is the same person, said Lena.
— Exactly.
— Perhaps when people meet after years apart, they shouldn’t ask, ‘Why have you changed?’ the newcomer said softly.
— What should they ask?
She thought for a few seconds.
— Perhaps, ‘Who are you now?’
The bus was quiet for a while.
Even I had no reply.
Only the engine and the rain striking the glass could be heard.
I looked in the mirror again.
The newcomer was no longer a complete stranger to me.
Yet strangely, now that I knew how she recognised me, she herself seemed more of a mystery.
She had seen me on television.
Perhaps she had read something I had written.
Perhaps she had known me from a distance for years.
But I knew almost nothing about her.
I did not even know why she had said ‘Who are you now?’ in that particular way, like someone who had asked herself the question many times before asking me.
The woman in red opened her book again.
Lena watched the street.
The newcomer whispered something in her sister’s ear.
The donkey drew his head away from the window and looked at me.
I met his eyes in the mirror.
— Don’t look at me. I’ve realised it too.
He gave a short bray.
— No, that part I really don’t know.
— What don’t you know? asked the newcomer.
I smiled and shifted my hands on the wheel.
— When we find one another again after years apart, are we really finding the people in front of us…
I paused.
— Or are we only looking for the people we used to know?
Nobody answered.
The bus moved on through the rainy London streets.
And for the first time since the newcomer had boarded, it no longer mattered to me where she knew me from.
Another question had taken its place:
Where had she herself come from?
And why did I feel that before she got on our bus, this woman had already travelled part of the way with us?
The donkey brayed softly.
— I know.
This time you’re right.
Some questions shouldn’t be answered too soon.
To be continued…
Naser Kamali
London, Covent Garden, to the lovely sound of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
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