Bussing it

As I mentioned in my previous post, the ride home from school has been a little bit hectic recently. Since the crowds seemed inevitable regardless of which bus I took, I decided to stick to my normal bus route home and embrace the feeling of being packed like a sardine in a can.

There are two kinds of busses here in Damascus, the same 12-seater white tin cans that you find in many other countries outside of the US, and snazzy new green city busses that you can find in any ‘modern’ city. Either way the ride is 10 Syrian lira (about 20 cents) and if you take the big busses, which are less frequent but a little more comfortable, you have to get a ticket from the driver and stamp it on both sides for the ticket collector who comes around periodically. I’ve only had a collector on my bus twice so far, and I don’t really know what the fine is but I’d rather not find out. When there are people spilling out the doors of the bus (while it is driving) it makes it a little difficult to work your way up to the front and buy yourself a ticket so on one particularly crowded afternoon I held on to my bags and hoped for the best.

Of course this was one of the two times a collector joined the ride. But before I even noticed he was on the bus, someone next to me handed me a stamped ticket. I offered him a 10 lira coin but he said, “No, without money.” Confused I looked around and saw the ticket collector and the guy told me to show it to him. The collector takes the tickets, checks them and rips them in half, but as for mine he saw it in my hand and waved me away. When he turned around the guy told me to give it back to him and tucked it back into his coat pocket for another crowded ride and perhaps another helpless foreigner.

This left me with a whirl of questions in my head—How did he know the ticketman wouldn’t take mine and rip it up? Where did his extra ticket come from and how can he use it on multiple rides? How does this system work anyway? If you can buy just one ticket and save it until the ticketman comes, why would anyone bother buying one for each trip? Perhaps I would have voiced a few of these questions but I didn’t know exactly how to express them so I smiled my thanks and sat there confused. I’m not sure in which direction this tips the honesty scale for Syria, but this was one instance where I was glad to be so obviously an oblivious foreigner.

At the same time, I am equally grateful for the times when I am completely ignored or treated as any other city-dweller—that is, when it is not assumed that I am oblivious/inept just because I am foreign. The first time (okay the only time) someone asked me for directions, in Arabic, and I could respond appropriately, that was big, and also the first time someone handed me money to buy them a ticket as I was making my way to the front of the crowded bus. I can be useful too! I am not only tall and strange-looking and something to stare at while walking down the street.