recommended listening: thunder road, by bruce springsteen
Maybe that conversation planted the idea, but for whatever reason, a couple nights later, I can’t get Springsteen out of my mind:
The night’s busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere.
From the harmonica-piano intro and the slamming screen door to the triumphant, “I’m pullin’ out of here to win!” it’s the soundtrack for one of America’s most powerful freedom metaphors: driving full-speed into the dark.
I find myself humming as I sit here in the bus.
It’s near midnight, and the drunkest guy in the back is trying to sway his way to the front of the bus when he loses his balance, right into my lap.
“You need to stand up.”
He nods. “Gotta stop the bus.”
“Get up.”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t move.
“Now! Stand!”
The bus driver puts down his beer and pulls over. We made great time for the first three hours, but now the pre-departure alcohol is working its way through the digestive systems of the businessmen at the back, and we’re pulling to the side of the road every twenty minutes.
I don’t complain: had some bad kabobs in the Old City.
At one in the morning, we pull into a restaurant that gives free food to bus drivers. Three other busses have just pulled in and we only have half an hour, so there’s quite a rush. There’s no name for the restaurant, but there’s a sign that says, “Toilet.” There probably wasn’t enough room on the marquis for, “Eight holes in a cement floor, a hundred desperate men, and not a piece of paper in sight.”
Staff trips like this used to be more common at the school, but since I got there, we’ve been in almost constant crisis—a correlation I try to ignore. Finally, we decided to do something fun, like spend thirty hours crossing a desert and coming back by night bus. Leave after class Friday and be back just in time for classes on Monday morning. One of the staff members is from the Old City, so the women will sleep on the floor of her house, and the men will sleep at a neighbor’s. And so it was done.
The group’s energetic, so we ignored the unexpected cold front. Who cares about rain? This is the Old City! It’s the kind of place where you have to say, “so that”. Rugs so intricately woven that the makers go blind by the time they’re twenty. Ceramics so brightly painted that the USSR gave them as gifts to foreign governments. Handwritten Qur’ans so valuable that they’re protected by spirits and spells. Memorials for teachers so holy that a pilgrimage here is an acceptable substitute for the trip to Mecca.
We make conversation with the guard, give toy cars to his little brother, and get to climb the off-limits minaret. I stand where Genghis Khan stood when they say he screamed, “I am God’s punishment for your sins!”
We go to the palaces of the great Emirs.
We enter the harem, which looks disappointingly like a private-college dormitory with an Olympic-sized wading pool out front. An old floorplan on the wall shows a separate section of the harem for boys? “That sign is old,” the guide says. “You must not believe the legends. The Emirs were noble.” History here is kind to locals.
And we eat kabobs.
Stop again. Two a.m. This time, it’s the police. The driver stuffs the empty beer bottles under the seat and unlocks the money box. Murmur on the bus has it that he has foreign car engines in the luggage compartment, trying to avoid the 100% import tax. Standing in front of the bus, headlights shining right on him, he gives the police a wad of money and gets back on the bus.
That’s when I hear a low voice in English from over my shoulder: “Excuse me. What was your financial situation when you first lay with Lauren?”
Yeah, knowing the setting didn’t help me see that one coming, either. There is only one good answer: “I don’t think I understand your question.”
Ross glances at Rachel, sleeping beside him, and begins to explain. He doesn’t think it would be loving to sleep with her unless he’s really committed. He thinks he’s ready to make the commitment, but he’s worried about being able to support her.
“So are you thinking of marriage?”
“No. I don’t like drunk crowds. I just want to spend all of my life with her.”
His religion views marriage as a social, not a religious, contract, which the Soviets minimized to a few legal documents. A wedding here is, in Ross’s words, “family, friends, and neighbors drunk for a couple days, and then lots of clean-up and debt.” Marriage is a quaint, irrelevant custom, like lamb’s blood on doorposts.
Three a.m., and there’s a light outside the window. This is wrong: there are no street lights or towns for a hundred miles. Slowly, slowly identification comes. It’s half of a car on fire. Sleepy heads turn toward the other side of the bus. There’s the other half. The metal is glowing. The bus doesn’t stop.
Four a.m., and Chris’s voice beside me asks if I believe God always punishes sin. Again, there’s only one honest answer. Four years ago, he got into some trouble, alcohol, a girl. Then his father died. Is there a connection?
Four-thirty, and an approaching bus flashes its lights. Stop. The drivers stand in the middle of the highway and talk.
Five o’clock. Stop to pick up two men standing by the side of the road. There are no buildings, vehicles, or lights in sight. They pay the driver in bottles of vodka.
Six o’clock. Rachel’s voice over my shoulder thanks me for talking with Ross.
Seven-forty-five, and I’m home. Lauren reaches around her growing stomach to give me a hug.
“So, did everyone have a good time?”
“Yeah, they did. Most of them had never been out of the city before. Right before we pulled in, Chris said, ‘Trips like this really make you feel free, don’t they?’”
“Daddy?” Ella says, “Mommy forgot music for breakfast. Can I pick something out?”
“Not this time, honey.” I put on Springsteen.
