The Suffering of Being Kafka | Page 8

has no bags. She could
have detonated herself and demolished us by now."
My neighbour slaps his thighs with furry hands, a sign of pleasure. I am
on his side. Some voices crow, encouraging me to proceed: "Let him
continue, go on."
But I have got nothing more to add and I grow silent.
The Arab scrutinises me doubtfully, not sure if she understood
correctly. Do I suspect her of being a terrorist or don't I?
"And who might you be to tell us off, if I may?" - scoffs the woman
who started it all. Her voice is screaming hoarse, her face aflame with
stripes of lipstick smeared and make up oozing. Three golden bracelets
clang the rhythm of her scornful question.
"He is a prisoner" - announces the driver's would-be floozy. She eyes
both me and her desired conquest triumphantly. The driver studies her
in his overhead mirror, then gives a haunted look. Control is lost. He
knows it.
"An inmate" - shrieks the agitator for all the bus to hear - "The perfect
couple! A felon and an Arab! Perhaps you are an Arab too?"
"I am not an Arab" - I respond calmly - "They are too well mannered
for the likes of me and you."
She blows up:
"Son of a bitch, maniac, look who's talking!" - She leans towards me

and scratches my face with broken, patchily varnished nails - "A
prisoner piece of shit and whoring stench of an Arab stink up this bus!"
My neighbour half rises from our common seat, grabs her extended arm
and affixes it firmly behind her back. She screams to her dumbfounded
audience: "They are together in it, this entire group, and they are a
menace. Driver, stop this instant, I want the police, now!"
I do not react. It was foolish of me to have partaken in this tiff in the
first place. Prisoners involved in incidents of public unrest end up
spending a week or more in the nearest squalid detention centre, away
from the relative safety of the penitentiary. Anything can happen in
these infernos of perspiring, drug-addicted flesh, those killing fields of
haemorrhaging syringes, those purgatories of squeals and whimpers
and shaking of the bars, draped tight in sooty air.
I spent a month in these conditions and was about to return, I feel
convinced.
The driver brakes the bus, rises, and gestures to the Arab helplessly.
She tries to extricate herself by moving towards his cubicle. Some
women mesh their hands, trapping her flapping arms, flailing about, her
cheeks lattices of translucent rivulets. Her fear is audible in shallow
exhalations.
But her captors persevere. They clench her scarf and the trimmings of
her coat and twist them around the Arab's breathless neck.
The driver disembarks through the pneumatically susurrating doors. He
walks the gravel path adjacent to the highway, desperately trying to
wave down a passing car. Someone finally stops and they have a
hushed exchange through a barricaded window. The hatchback cruises
away.
The driver hesitates, his eyes glued to the receding vehicle. He
contemplates the hostile bus with dread and climbs aboard. He sinks
into his seat and sighs.
A patrol car arrives a few minutes later and disgorges two policemen.
One elderly, stout and stilted, his face a venous spasm. He keeps
feeling the worn butt of his undersized revolver. The other cop does the
talking. He is lithe, a youth in camouflage, penumbral moustache,
anorectic, sinewy hands, his eyes an adulterated cyan. He swells his
chest and draws back his bony shoulders, attempting to conceal his
meagreness.

"What's going on here?" - his voice a shocking bass. We are silenced
by the contrast.
The instigator of the turmoil clears a path and fingers his oversized
tunic as she volunteers:
"She is a terrorist and he is a convict and they were both planning to
blow this bus up."
"Twaddle!" - roars my neighbour - "She is a hysterical, psychotic,
panicky woman! Look what she did to his face!" - he points at me -
"And that one, over there" - he singles the Arab out with a nail-bitten
pinkie - "her only sin is that she is an Arab, a nurse or something, a
fellow traveller, paid her ticket like all of us." The driver nods his
assent.
"I am telling you..." - the stirrer yelps but the officer is terse:
"Continue behaving like this, lady, and it is you I will arrest for
disturbing the peace..."
"Another mock cop" - she slurs, but her voice is hushed and hesitant.
"Perhaps even insulting a police officer on duty?" - the policeman hints
and she is pacified, retreating, crablike, eyes downcast, towards her
shopping.
"Who is the prisoner?" - the veteran cop enquires, his paw atop his gun,
caressing it incessantly.