It was very early in the morning when I caught the bus. Afraid I wouldn’t make it on time, I left my apartment an hour early. I took the most circuitous route to the bus stop; call me old-fashioned, but I find relying on my instincts at the pitch of stress to be much more reliable than aimlessly trusting my phone to lead the way. Even if I have to rush through alleys overhung with baby-orange clouds of aurora, through obscure neighborhoods, or through streets mostly deserted but for the occasional silhouette in a top hat who would cross the street from afar to avoid passing by me, I still feel at greater ease at least knowing how I got to where I needed to go.

I hadn’t spoken a word to anyone on my way to the bus stop. Frankly, I didn’t have much of an opportunity to. I’m not lying: parents quickly drew their curtains shut when they saw me walking on the sidewalk and teenagers seated on empty park benches photographed me with their phones as I passed by and even this one old lady hobbled to the other side of the street upon my approach as if she would rather endure death than suffer my fleeting presence. Yet, as I climbed onto the bus, somehow I bore a silent burden of remorse for wronging all those people in route to my bus seat. My very existence seemed to wrong them.

The bus was crowded. I sat alone beside an emergency exit window, glancing up from my phone screen at the newly arrived passengers who tried as noiselessly as possible to settle in the hard plastic seats.

At every stop, I didn’t dare look up from my phone screen; I didn’t want to risk making awkward eye-contact with a newly arrived passenger. Only when their backs were turned and their immediate preoccupation became their comfort I would steal a glance or two at their general movements. Otherwise, I didn’t care to busy myself with the strangers around me. It’s not like I was too socially inept to know how to talk with a stranger on the bus. Quite the opposite, I was very outgoing and sociable in my free time; ask around the mosques of Dallas, if you don’t believe me; any acquaintance of mine can recall a myriad of instances after Friday prayer where I successfully rallied a portion of the men for a cup of tea and a game of cards at my apartment. On the bus I chose—yes, chose!—to withdraw into the serene gardens of prayer in my head where the buzz of divine devotion overlay the withering of my vices.

May Allah forgive me: I am not being totally sincere with you. The social part of me, I suppose, withers before these people. Like a son’s tongue crumbles to filial ash before his father. I don’t know why. It’s not like I have some overweening respect for them which silences me in their presence. If anything, I would say I actually harbor some unspoken grievances about the careless ways with which they handle their lives: like ravenous animals, they plunge into each other’s beds; they stuff themselves to the bursting point with beer and swine; drunk on their own imbecility, they exist within their bubble-like lives on their large island, toting the flag of liberty while their rulers divide and plunder nations aboard too small to even be heard in their death throes; and they turn their severe proud features from us tourists, effortlessly seeming to condemn the friendliness which, as a tourist, I prefer to invest in the locals, if only to distract them from the imminent realization that I do not belong here. Am I wrong not to tolerate them and their madness?

“Backdoor! Backdoor!” a raspy voice shouted behind me.

The backdoor hissed open. A mob of shoes clattered off the bus, making one side of the bus sway lightly as each passenger alighted onto the curb below. After the passengers had gotten off, silence hovered in the doorway.

The backdoor hissed shut. A crisp breeze was expelled between the doors, slapping one side of my face. I felt refreshed and soothed. My nostrils suddenly yawned to welcome the sleepy fumes unfurling off every other unwashed head.

Prompted, I looked around: the bus lurched forward, jostling the limp passengers. Their heads bobbed with the dizzying ups and downs of the road. It seemed as if this bus ride cast a numb spell on its riders, which wouldn’t wear off until the end of a workday or during a stroll alone on a moonlit street when they could convalesce from the monotonous rotations of worry and realize that all these little destinations in a day will never best the big destination at the end of a lifetime.

I turned around to face the front of the bus. Abruptly, I noticed a stocky businessman seated directly before me. He wore a navy blue blazer of an academic sense. Flecks of dandruff spotted his shoulders. Glancing up, I contemplated his graying afro without a thought in my mind. When did he get here?

Before I could answer myself, a lanky figure appeared over the businessman’s dandruff-spotted shoulders. I absently observed a bald white man carrying black plastic bags board at the front of the bus. He swiped his bus pass under the scanner stationed beside the bus driver’s seat. When the scanner gleefully beeped, he swung his lanky build into an empty seat whose back was positioned against the tinted windows.

I didn’t plan on stalking him; but some oddly magnetic quality about him encouraged me to steal glances. He wore golden, horn-rimmed glasses with glistening diamonds studded around the frame. A long silver chain hung from his neck between the glossy silver-plated buttons of a clean black leather jacket. He wore gray chino pants that fit nicely around his thighs. He had white scuffed air force ones on, which would occasionally tap against the dirty floor as if to punctuate the developing rhythms of a thought.

Was I staring at him? I didn’t think so. I recalled the respectful looking-time here was only a few seconds; people prefer to be left alone; if he had caught me looking at him—thank Allah he didn’t!—but if he had, he could have reasonably heckled me or threatened my life. Seriously. I’ve heard disturbing stories from my fellow tourists who on occasion unintentionally bother the locals here.

Suddenly fearing he might catch me staring at him, I resorted to observation by his opaque reflection on the emergency exit window. His silhouettish reflection melded into a hand-print beside the emergency exit latch where I sat; but I could still discern his movements just fine.

With his bags propped against the seat beside him, he reached inside and pulled out a newspaper sleeve folded in half with a healthy rubber band. He unbound the newspaper; a slim stack of lottery tickets slid onto his lap. Picking up a lottery ticket, he ruminated over its unscratched purple circles with a pouty face. He tilted the lottery ticket from side to side under the harsh ceiling light as if his destiny was spelled in its purple circles. He placed the lottery ticket on his thigh, reaching into his black bag.

But he froze.

Literally, his entire body stiffened as he went to reach into the bag. His bloodshot eyes stayed open. Either my eyes were lagging or a profound realization had hit him at the most random moment.

When he would not move, I started to worry that something fatal had happened to him. I glanced around me to see if any of the passengers were seeing what I was seeing.

They were not.

Farther down the rows, a construction worker with headphones covering his ears continued to gaze out the window. Some hunched student kept typing something on an iPad. This pair of middle-aged women chatted in hushed tones over a dozing fat man who sat between them. A nurse in scrubs held her hands in her lap, staring at the floor.

What the hell’s wrong with these people? Do they not see their fellow man in need? Do they not care for their own countrymen? If they don’t care for one of their own, what makes me think they care for me?

I snapped my head back at the frozen man.

He was staring at me. His mouth dangled open, forming an “O” with his saltine-thin, chapped lips. A small glistening bead of sweat trailed down his brow. Crow’s feet branched out the corners of his eyes. Each wrinkle whispered a tale of spurned ambition buried long ago in the shadows of his past.

He stood up. Composing his wrinkled face, he pointed his long index finger at me. His beetle black pupils looked politely furious. 

Surely he wasn’t pointing at me. He was singling out the construction worker who sat behind me. Perhaps, he recognized his face from a stroll long ago on the beaches of Trinidad or from under the flashing strobe lights of the nightclubs of Beirut. Perhaps the construction worker had boarded the same plane as him at one point in their itinerary lives. It was a one-way trip home. By coincidence, they’d sat side-by-side, talking for the entire flight, privately mourning the casual moment when they would part from each other’s lives at their respective gates despite the fact that they both dwelt under the same skies and that a simple exchange of numbers or socials could have easily lessened the burden of those lonely hours which reign in unquestioned authority when the apartment door closes on the outside world. Perhaps this was all a joke—people love to joke here, right?—and he just wanted to bother me because I had been bothering him with my furtive stares; and because his blood’s light (as the Arabic expression goes), he will take this joke further than most by continuing to bore his eyes into my soul. But I should breathe (am I breathing) since this is one huge misunderstanding which can be rectified by a discreet smile or by a remorseful show of running your little finger along your eyebrows or by gazing out my window until he goes away. Even if he forcibly tried to pry my face towards him, I would steady my jaws like a bull, withstand his dirty fingernails clawing into my flesh.

I pointed at myself with a questioning look on my face.

He nodded.

I pointed at the crotchet white Kufi cap on my head.

He nodded.

At that, I’d had enough.

“No,” I commanded in a whisper. What had happened to my voice? I was normally very loud, especially if I refused someone something. Repeating my refusal, I felt dry air pass over my lips.

He just kept staring at me.

“No,” I repeated a little louder than before. This time I cleared my throat afterwards, in case I’d have to speak again.

He described a sweeping motion with his index finger at something behind me.

I turned around.

Every passenger was on their feet. They were staring at me. Their lips formed a startled “O”. Their index fingers were raised at me: all at once, as if they had choreographed this part of the show, they pointed at my head. My Kufi.

“No!” I shouted with a voice lost at the bottom of a well.

Simultaneously, they nodded with one head.

I turned to the bald man, desperate.

While turning toward him, I caught a glimpse of the bus driver within the wide rear view mirror. With one eye on the rapidly descending road, his other eye fixed me with a cold stare. The rear view mirror froze a reflection of him pointing his index finger at my head.

My Kufi.

I felt something release in my chest. Like a lone glacier drifting away from a tundra. I knew right then that the bus driver had sealed my fate with his concurrence. Any slightest resistance which I might have posed against these brainless hooligans was dismissed by the authority of his opinion. Not that I necessarily planned on taking them all on by myself, that would be suicide. But in moments of crippling weakness, when I sensed the boundless distance that sequestered me from the people of this country in a den of private grievances from where I longed to live the tortured lives of my countrymen, if only to relive my familiar image of humanity, I would reach out to my Lord. Until now, I thought this was the best possible action I could take. But, thanks to them, I realized the futility of my prayer.

I took my Kufi off. Placing it on the empty seat next to me, I looked around me. The bald man and the rest of the passengers now pointed at my chest. My Thobe?

They nodded with one head.

I pulled the spotlessly white Thobe off my body, folding it atop the Kufi on the adjacent seat. I stood there wearing nothing but a white undershirt tucked into a Sirwal (i.e. white baggy underpants).

Without looking up, I stripped down to my brazenly hairy thighs. The white undershirt was discarded under my bus seat, already dirtied by dust-moats on the floor. My underpants lay wrangled over my Thobe.

I turned to the bald man.

His index finger was aimed at the emergency exit window beside me. He mouthed “open”. I understood at once.

Glancing back a last time at the bus driver in the rearview mirror who kept mouthing “open”, I turned to my fellow passengers. As if I expected them to reveal a contradictory opinion. They had their index fingers aimed at the emergency exit window, mouthing “open”.

I pulled the emergency exit window latch downwards. A sheet of glass dropped down. A humid current of air fluttered by the open window; it encouraged me to take the leap. I climbed out the window, fluttering into the dusky morning like a loose sheet of paper.

– M.B. Effendi