The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
Lena finished speaking.
Nobody said anything for a few moments.
The newcomer was looking outside. The woman in red had closed her book, and the monarchist remained silent.
I glanced in the mirror.
Sometimes a silence on a bus says more than ten minutes of talk.
— Perhaps the trouble starts when we reduce people to a single word instead of getting to know them, Lena said. — People emerge from families, class, fear, hope, failure, migration, prison, love and a thousand other experiences. Nobody is only the name they call themselves today, or the one others give them.
— So to understand people, you have to see their past as well, the newcomer said softly.
— Their past, and where they stand now.
The monarchist raised his head.
For a moment I thought he was about to speak.
He did not.
I asked nothing either.
Some silences should not be broken. You must let them find their own voices when they are ready.
I pressed the accelerator a little harder.
The bus moved slowly along the wet street.
It was still raining.
Shop lights stretched across the wet tarmac. Our red bus travelled among all those lights and shadows, a bus that did not know where it was taking its passengers, yet picked up a new argument every few stops.
Just then the donkey brayed from the back.
I looked at him in the mirror.
— What do you want now?
He brayed again.
— Yes, I understand. Ever since you boarded, you’ve wanted food, a seat and the right to express an opinion.
The woman in red laughed.
— He has a right to those things. He’s one of the passengers, after all.
— A passenger?
I thought for a moment.
— In fact, our gentleman here is a migrant himself.
The newcomer laughed.
— Where did he migrate from?
— His file isn’t complete yet. He refuses to cooperate. He won’t show a passport, won’t give his place of birth and won’t even fill in the immigration form.
The donkey brayed.
— See? The moment I mentioned immigration, he objected.
Laughter went round the bus.
Even the corner of the monarchist’s mouth moved a little.
— Perhaps he’s a refugee, said the woman in red.
— No, madam. He’s far too clever for that. He probably told them he was visiting relatives when he entered the country, got straight on our bus and has refused to get off ever since.
— He might be in exile, said Lena.
— Come on, now. Don’t invent a political history for the donkey too.
Lena laughed.
— Why? Can’t a donkey be exiled?
— If he could talk, knowing him, he’d probably claim he had to leave the stable because of his political activities.
The laughter grew louder this time.
The donkey brayed too.
— There you are. He confirms it.
— But migrants and people in exile really aren’t the same, said the newcomer.
The laughter subsided.
It was a simple sentence, but something in it altered the air on the bus.
Lena looked at her.
— These words have always made me uneasy, the newcomer went on. — Migrant, refugee, exile… People use them interchangeably so easily.
— Are they so different? asked the woman in red.
The newcomer hesitated.
— I think they are.
— In the end we’re all migrants of one sort or another, the monarchist said suddenly.
Lena turned towards him, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
— All of us?
— Well, if someone leaves their country and comes here, they’ve migrated, whatever name you give it.
I shifted my hands on the wheel.
I felt my joke about the donkey was slowly taking us somewhere that was no laughing matter.
— Geographically, perhaps that’s true, said the woman in red. — Someone has gone from one country to another.
— But life isn’t only geography, Lena said.
— What do you mean? asked the monarchist.
Lena leant forwards a little.
— There’s a difference between deciding to go and being told by your circumstances that if you stay you may be imprisoned, killed, deprived of your freedom or unable to live as you wish.
— In both cases the person left their country.
— Yes. Someone who leaves home for an outing and someone whose house is on fire have both come out of their homes. But do they have the same story?
He said nothing.
The newcomer looked at Lena.
— So it’s about choice? asked the woman in red.
— In part. Yet choice isn’t always straightforward either. Many migrants are pushed by economic pressure, poverty, unemployment or a lack of any future. We can’t pretend they all packed freely and decided on a whim to live somewhere else.
— Some suitcases are packed by their owners, I said, — and some are packed for them by history.
Lena looked at me and smiled.
— That was good.
— Drivers occasionally talk sense too.
The donkey brayed.
— You keep quiet. We still don’t know whether you packed your own suitcase or were thrown out of the stable.
Several people laughed again, but briefly this time.
The word ‘exile’ was sitting in the middle of the bus now.
Not on a seat.
Among the people.
— Who exactly is a person in exile? asked the newcomer.
Lena did not answer straight away.
She looked out of the window.
The rain had eased.
— Perhaps before defining it, we should see what exile does to a person.
— For example? asked the woman in red.
— Migration can be the beginning of a new life. Exile, too, may eventually become a new life. But an exiled person has usually left behind something that has not ended.
— You mean the past comes along with them? I asked.
— Exactly.
She paused.
— Someone may live in London for thirty years, work, have a home, make friends, learn the language and even love the city. Yet part of them may still be standing on a street they were once forced to leave.
— So they never quite arrive? asked the newcomer.
— Perhaps arriving isn’t the point. Sometimes exile means having to live in two times: the present you’re living in and the past that has yet to end in your mind.
The monarchist spoke again:
— But after many years, plenty of people don’t go back, even if they can.
— True, said Lena.
He had evidently expected an argument.
She continued:
— Exile cannot be explained entirely by whether somebody returns. A person may one day have the chance to go back and still decide against it. They’ve made another life over the years; their children have grown up here; their relationships have changed; they’ve changed. Even the country they left is no longer the country it was.
— And they aren’t the people they used to be either, said the woman in red.
— Exactly.
I looked in the mirror.
I liked that thought.
The country you left has changed.
You have changed too.
So if you return one day, who is returning to where?
I was about to say it, but did not.
It was too soon.
— Can someone be both a migrant and a person in exile? asked the newcomer.
— People’s lives are more complicated than our definitions. Words should help us understand people, not imprison them.
The donkey brayed again.
— We still haven’t settled his case, I said.
— What case? asked the woman in red.
— Migrant or exile?
— Ask him, said Lena.
I looked at him in the mirror.
— Comrade, clear this up once and for all. Did you come of your own free will, or were you forced?
The donkey was silent for several seconds.
Then he gave a mighty bray.
— Very well. He declines to answer the question.
The newcomer laughed.
— Perhaps his asylum application is still being processed.
— We’d better not ask too much, then. His solicitor might sue us later.
Laughter spread through the bus again.
But in the mirror I could see that Lena was no longer laughing.
She was looking at the wet street.
The monarchist had fallen silent too.
The woman in red had laid her book on her knees again.
And the newcomer still seemed to be thinking about her question:
Could someone be both a migrant and a person in exile?
The bus crossed the junction.
The light turned green.
I drove on.
Perhaps at the next stop, I thought, we would have to talk about something more difficult:
When you live for years far from a place that was once home, where do you belong in the end?
Where you came from?
Where you live now?
Both?
Or sometimes neither?
The donkey gave a soft bray from the back of the bus.
This time I did not reply.
Perhaps, for the first time, his question was no simpler than ours.
To be continued…
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