I want to talk about that feeling everyone gets; when all you want, need, is to press pause on life for everything to just stop. But disappointment consumes one with the fact that life still is moving, and will continue to (in spite of all you do).
When I get a snippet of a clue as to why I just wrote that, I’ll tell you. I’m in a mood, I guess.
I’m on a bus as I write this. In forty-five minutes I’ll make it to Sharjah for a chore I have concerning university. So here now I decided to entertain myself by rudely staring at what people are doing around me and what they’re talking about. (Not that I’m intending to be rude, but I’m bored; hence, I’ll be listening in on what people’s conversations.)
My eyes prowl around at the others in the bus. An old man has his head leaned on the window, quiet and unmoving. At one point I truly thought he was dead, till the bus went too fast on a speed-bump which gave a minor tap on the window with the mans bobbing head that woke him up abruptly. ‘Crises averted’ I thought. Then on the right I saw a girl with shaggy brown hair silently reading 1984 by George Orwell; a book that, coincidentally, was mentioned in a discussion between two teenagers in the front as they talked about Haruki Murakami’s novel 19Q4, that was written in dedication to 1984. The first boy was a tad scrawny, tall, black hair, big Prada glasses, and the other boy was the opposite, with his big belly, and clearly short height, but both looking very intellectual. They had a very quick digression of topic, and so it went on. (I found it funny how they never fully concluded their discussions. They moved to a separate one as they neared the end.) I noticed a picture next to the driver: it was of him, a woman, and two little girls. ‘His wife and daughters’ I assume. None of the others did anything noticeable, so I stopped.
The, most likely, fourteen year old kid behind me kicked my chair a seventh time; even after I told him KINDLY to stop. Notice how I mentioned I was in a mood, and I swear on a better day I would let it slide, but I felt it necessary that I turn and pop a threat to make him stop.
It worked. (I’m not a violent person, so worry not because there was no way in hell I would have acted on the threat.)
Now I wait.
By Saif Nasir
