Bus 174

by Rebecca M. Ross

May 2, 2011

What feels like a block of heat is making breathing almost impossible, and I edge closer to the gradually diminishing shadow cast by the young palm trees in a nearby garden. The bus is later than I’d like and I can’t even put a number on the temperature. In my head I’m thinking 110° but that might just be an emotional reaction. It’s a dry heat, everyone says, so you don’t feel it as much. By those calculations the West Bank probably registers at least 120°. 

The cool stone wall that separates me from the lush garden is low enough to peer over. The garden is filled with grass, tightly placed palms, and a pomegranate tree with the beginnings of fruit. The lush overhang of a fig tree sits to the side of the house. Peeking out from the protection of hand-shaped leaves are heavy new figs: some green, some purple, some almost black. Children’s toys are scattered about: fire engine-red tricycles, bright plastic buckets and shovels, balls, a blue kiddie pool with pictures of smiling fish. Across the street there are far fewer trees. Instead, there is a row of graying apartment buildings which span the long block leading to the base of the hill that goes to the top of Ma’ale Adumim. The buildings are all set above the street and to access the entrance, one must climb about a flight and a half of stairs which mercilessly reflect the strong Middle Eastern sun. From the entrance, there are more stairs and more stairs and more stairs, filling visitors to the fourth floor with regret if they’ve inadvertently left something downstairs. I’ve just come from there, running up to drop one of the kids off at daycare and running back down just in time to miss the bus. My hope is that the next one will come soon so I can get to my course in Jerusalem on time.

This bus stop is one of the more pleasant stops in the city. Despite the heat, there’s still shade at this hour in the morning and it’s the first stop after the bus turns around at the traffic circle by the little playground. Further past the playground are more houses, custom built for mostly Americans who will eventually come here to live permanently and some who will come for only a few months out of the year. From the bus stop, the wealthier part of the neighborhood is barely visible, but throughout the day the sounds of new construction projects echo through the desert and up the street.

I squint, searching for a bus. A man in khakis and sandals crosses the street and stands a few feet away from me. The three buttons at the top of his shirt are open and his curly black chest hairs push out onto his orange shirt. A young woman in olive fatigues with a rifle and duffle bag slung across her back shuffles tiredly to the stop. I hear the sigh of a bus coming from somewhere up the hill. An Arab woman, her skin the color of cinnamon, walks lightly over to where we all stand waiting. I nod politely and smile, acknowledging her just as I have all who’ve joined me here. She tips her scarf-covered head in reply and then shyly retreats from the few people waiting. They ignore her, just as they do all of the Arab workers who come in every day from the neighboring villages of Abu Dis and Al Azariya, or perhaps East Jerusalem, to take away the garbage, to do construction, to keep the city beautiful.

The hum of the bus draws near until it turns around at the traffic circle and stops in front of us. I step aside to let the scarved woman on. She lifts her plum-colored skirt slightly to step up and shyly nods her thanks. She sits towards the back of the empty bus, near the exit. At each stop, more passengers get on, each regarding her with polite caution. If she wasn’t wearing a hijab, she could easily pass for an Israeli, but the style in which the colorful headscarf is tied is her betrayal. I can see her from where I sit. She has the first seat by the back exit, in the first row of seats up the step that separates the back of the bus from the middle. It’s a great seat to have –very little pushing to get to the door.

The last passenger gets on and the bus pulls away from the curb. It is the last stop before it begins climbing the hill to the older and more densely populated Klei Shir neighborhood. The bus sighs and stops again. More people board. Some are dressed for work in Jerusalem, some are going back to army bases around the country, some are headed to school. Clusters of four-story apartment buildings greet us at the top of the hill, all with windows overlooking the golden desert. It is a clear day and in the distance the Dead Sea winks in the sunlight. With each stop, the bus nears its capacity both in people and in sound. The sleepy morning quiet has become a panoply of voices conversing in Hebrew, Russian, English, Amharic, French.

I glance at my Arab woman. She sits quietly, covered head bowed, hands nervously twisting the strap of her tote bag. The other passengers steal furtive glances at her in between texting and playing with their iphones, trying to determine if she is one of them, a terrorist. She tries not to notice them noticing her but it is difficult. She is used to being invisible.

It is now standing-room only and one of my neighbors, a white-haired Persian Jew, his face rough with history, is in front of me. “B’vakasha,” I say in my obvious American accent as I get up. “Please.” He takes my seat. He is a dentist in Jerusalem. One of the best, he says. He glances at the woman in the scarf, not unkindly.

“Aravi?” he inquires across the aisle. She nods timidly. The deep lines on his face soften into a smile. “Boker tov.” She looks at him, questioningly as if to say me? and then greets him with a quiet good morning. The other passengers stare at him. Meshuga, they whisper. Crazy old man. He begins speaking to her in her language, translating into a mix of Hebrew and broken English so I may understand.

Her grandfather, he translates, used to own land here. Land with olive trees, ancient trees with thick striated, gnarled gray-hued trunks. Trunks anchored by hardened, knotty roots twisted impossibly into the sandy earth and impossible to remove. Trunks that look like thousands of long, bony fingers interlaced and winding upwards and then separating into low branches covered in narrow, dusty almond shaped leaves. Olive trees that had witnessed thousands of years of ever-changing history and had not flinched, but had only grown stronger and more resilient. Olive trees, from which branches are taken as representations of peace.

The bus stops at the big white shopping mall, where I’ve spent countless hours escaping the oppressive heat of my apartment. A block away is the Peace Library. I can’t imagine how many years until peace exists on something other than the name of a library. A bunch of people get off, clearing the aisle. The bus makes another stop near the police department and then a final stop at the checkpoint leaving Ma’ale Adumim. The Arab woman wishes us peace and departs from the back door. Just beyond the checkpoint, at the traffic circle, people from neighboring Arab villages sit on the grass beneath the palms, waiting. The woman walks through the checkpoint and as the bus turns right onto Highway 1, I imagine that she’s walking up the road to her village, or maybe crushing into a hot taxi with other women on their way home or to work or school.

I think about her and sigh. We pass cities surrounded by massive concrete walls, fences topped with barbed wire. I strain to see past the partition. I see homes crowded together on hilltops. I see some newer apartment buildings rising above the barrier--apartment buildings that I can see from my own Ma’ale Adumim apartment--overlooking the larger checkpoint that will allow our bus out of the West Bank and into Jerusalem. I want to fly off the bus and see what lies beyond those walls, buy spices from burlap bags, eat hot shwarma wrapped in freshly baked lafa, drink coffee and play shesh besh. I want to listen to people’s stories and share my own. The bus is waved through the checkpoint and it speeds through the tunnel. I want to get off and go back, but history only moves forward, propelling me against my will into the unknown future.

Rebecca M. Ross is a fiction writer, a playwright and an English teacher. She is currently working on a collection of short stories. Her play, Unorthodox!, was just recently read at The Creek and the Cave in Long Island City, New York and is being prepared for production. Rebecca’s work has been published on Unpious, Scribblers on the Roof, and Errant Parent. You can follow her blog at www.rebeccamross.blogspot.com.

Copyright Rebecca M. Ross/ The New Vilna Review 2011.