The Bus Ride

The evening wore a very disgruntled and tedious look as if the day itself had a bad day. Warm hot air blew through the bus window and smell of orange wafted through the air. The smell within the bus was rancid with body odor that permeated through bodies that stick through sweaty shirts, blouses, and petticoats. It was the heavy smell of helplessness, despair, and tiredness.

The bus slowed, the conductor pushed two women and the children clinging to them out the door. A passing scooter sped past the wrong side of the road barely missing the first woman. The conductor smirked as he took a peek at her blouse and mentally gauged the potential within. To stop his imagination from running wild, he screamed a profanity and the bust started moving towards the next stop.

The little girl beside me kept slipping off the seat as she tried to perch herself up every time the motion of the bus uprooted her from the seat. “Uh Oh”, she said and then placing one small palm on my thigh she tried to balance herself on the seat. I moved to my right pressing myself against the side of the bus as much as I can to make room. I helped her perch and then sit. My effort seemed to have paid off. She didn’t slide down on the next two consecutive bounces and managed to keep herself steady when a cow came in front of the bus and the driver pressed the brake pedal for a change – to wake himself up.

“Thank you”, she said. I smiled and looked out the window. After sometime the bus was on the highway and rolled with a steady motion. Sleep consumed me and I started to doze. Suddenly the little girl tagged on my shirt and asked me if she could sit by window. Her mother protested. I agreed. So we changed places and I was sitting next to her mother. The rancid was stronger and she smiled as if to tell me that she know I could smell her. I folded my hand and dropped my shoulders ready to doze off again but decided to check on the little girl. She looked out the window and her hair blew within the reigns of her hair clips creating small waves on her small head. She looked serene. I smiled and looked out the window myself.

Dark mellow clouds drifted on the southern sky and covered the raging sun. The sunrays, however, continued to cut through the clouds trying to stake their claim as the only source of truth in the sky. They lost. The clouds grew darker, the wind sharper and the hillocks stared up at the sky mocking the defeat of the sunrays. Drops of rain started to hit my face and I asked the little girl if she wanted me to roll up the window. She said, “No”.
The girl shivered and I placed my hand on her shoulders. She relaxed. The bus was moving at a fast pace and the passengers inside glowed with a newfound charm. The rancid odor was less hostile and the girl’s mother beside me dozed clutching her little brother. I began to doze and dream.

The Beginning

The walk down from the university convocation center tired him. He sat on the neatly laid out bed with a fresh white bedspread covering it. The incessant design on the spread threw up a bright flowery pattern. It seemed to him lately that everything around his world threw up a pattern. A pattern that came and went from his mind’s eye, rechotting off his memory walls into the vast emptiness of eternity. A memory so distasteful, he hated to recollect but this very memory is the core of his existence, the purpose of his life – the reason why Allah still kept him away from the FBI dragnet.

The mobile phone started to ring. He waited for three rings and picked up the phone, “Hello” he said softly into the sleek Nokia 9290 communicator. “You will be glad to know that phase II of the project has been successfully executed. Phase four is on its way” We plan to finish it exactly 10 days before the holy month of Ramzan starts”, the voice spoke softly from the other side of the line. “ Excellent, keep up the pace, I do not want to hear any crap about technical snags in the last moment” breathed Abdulla. “We won’t give you an opportunity”. The phone went off with a small delightful click. “Technology” thought Abdulla. “We will pay them in their own terms – with compound interest”.

Abdulla picked up the satellite phone receiver and voiced in an access code. The screen flickered, and a password text field appeared. He punched in four numbers and waited. The console displayed, “Validating access code”. “Access granted, establishing contact. Type in the contact code”, instructed the console. The line at the other end remained silent. After exactly three seconds, Abdulla pressed in the contact codes. The line immediately came alive and Abdulla spoke in Arabic. “The third phase is underway”. ‘Hope its worth the money invested in the project. We seek infinite justice”, the voice at other end spoke in fluctuating decibels, result of a satisfying, long drawn ejaculation. “ And justice shall be done” convinced Abdulla. The line went dead.

It was 2:00 PM in the afternoon and Abdulla decided to go to the university library. Lately he seemed to spend a lot of time in the library, talking to other Arab students at his class, holding court, justifying the cause, clearing doubts and scheming. He shut the two windows in the dorm and looked in the direction of the apartment across the street. The room seemed empty. “Julia must have gone out”, he figured. He picked up his mobile, squeezed his feet into the pair of Nike, closed the door behind him and stood still. Everything seemed normal. The siren of a police car broke the stillness of the calm outside. He skipped a heart beat. He relaxed. “It OK, just a routine petrol cruiser” he calmed himself and walked calmly towards the elevator.

Once on the pavement, Abdulla became one of them – the milling, thronging, briskly walking New Yorkers, another face in the crowd, another student, another middle eastern youth, clean shaven, big eyes with thick eyelashes and full lips – another Arab, nicknamed “The Angel”, with another mission in the name of Allah to attain eternal peace.

As he entered the university area, he could almost visualize in his mind’s eye the burning, collapsing steel, towering giant structures being reduced to mangled pieces of wreckage, the smell of destruction, the human limbs entwined in the debris – the attack on the world trade towers- exactly a year before, the event that gave his fellow brothers the supreme opportunity to attain the ultimate martyrdom and they are now resting in peace in heaven. He would have been one of them by now, if he had not been ordered at the last moment to stay behind and coordinate the mopping up operation before slithering out of the United States and back to Kabul. He was elated and felt that finally the time had come when these white vermin would be wiped off from the face of the earth and the will of Allah shall prevail upon the world.