Is there any better window into the essence of a place than the unfiltered exchanges that occur in the melting pots created by public transportation? Probably there is—but here in Oxford, at least, the fact remains that the buses are settings that can provide golden nuggets of insight into going-ons about town and beyond. Seemingly mundane aspects of the bus system itself also reflect and construct tiny pieces of cultural norms. Consider having one door per vehicle, as opposed to two (not that this is unique to the UK, but it certainly isn’t the norm everywhere); it actually alters the entire ethos of the use of the transportation. Boarding the bus without a ticket, for example, becomes impossible, given the nonexistence of the requisite back entrance—and this precludes even considering cheating or attempting to get the best of the system, such that an honest culture of paying for every ride you take is automatically established. But the workings of a bus system itself can only be of so much interest, and pale in comparison to the fascinating things you hear from the strangers in transit with you, which offer reflections of the repercussions on individual lives of large-scale events. Consider having one door per vehicle, as opposed to two; it actually alters the entire ethos of the use of the transportation. One afternoon, a Swiss woman expressed her own personal fear of terrorism to an acquaintance, after the New York bombing that injured 29 people on 18 September, which took place near where she had once worked. She then explained a curious fact about gun control in Switzerland; all 18-year-old boys are required to fulfill a year of military service, after which each one of them is provided with a gun by the government…but the sale of bullets in Switzerland is evidently strictly regulated. Who knew? One afternoon, a Swiss woman expressed her own personal fear of terrorism to an acquaintance. Another morning, following the shocking assault of a 14-year-old schoolgirl on 28 September in one of the busiest areas of Oxford, in broad daylight, the horror and acute personal fear the attack provoked throughout the city were apparent on the bus in the conversation of a group of middle school girls. They were earnestly coordinating how they would travel home together, citing their mothers’ words of caution, and under no circumstances intended to allow each other to go anywhere alone. You do sometimes witness moments that are purely heartwarming, like two sets of glowing young parents proudly sharing their newborn daughters’ names with each other. But something happened on the bus this Friday afternoon that revealed a social divide I’d never witnessed so acutely firsthand. They were earnestly coordinating how they would travel home together, citing their mothers’ words of caution, and under no circumstances intended to allow each other to go anywhere alone. An older couple was sitting near the front of the double-decker bus, on the lower level. In front of them sat an elderly man—white hair, glasses, carrying a cane. He was alone. From the back of the bus, it appeared that the man spontaneously starting yelling at the couple behind him to shut up. The whole bus went silent, with people exchanging nervously amused glances and wondering how or whether to react. The old man stood up and turned around, eyes wide, voice trembling with rage, brandishing his cane. The couple claimed they hadn’t said anything, and he emphatically called them “bloody liars.” His next words explained the real source of his aggression. “You Chinese…you should go back where you came from…” was accompanied by a general spewing of furious derogatory comments. The couple responded that they weren’t even Chinese, and the man being yelled at told the person with the cane he should “go home.” The abuser seemed to have been waiting for just such a comment. He radiated this fury that I haven’t seen many times in my (albeit limited) life experience. “Say that to me again,” he challenged, threatening to hit the people with his cane. A younger man sitting very close by finally stood up and told the cane-bearer to calm down. He spoke English with an accent when he did so—not only did the aggressor tell him to mind his own bloody business, but the man seized on the accent, and began ranting about how he, they, everyone foreign was destroying England, taking English people’s jobs. A British woman also close by stood up and, close to tears, pleaded with the man with the cane to sit down, telling him he was upsetting everyone. His response was unintelligible from the back of the bus—but the young man with the accent, earnest and unfazed, continued engaging the old man. He told him he did not agree with what the man was saying in insulting the couple; that we all have to respect each other; that only “the mind,” not the ethnicity, can “make a person bad.” Moreover, when the victims of the entire exchange, the couple, finally dismounted, passengers went out of their way to apologize to them on the man’s behalf. The man himself sat down as before; silent. Alone. The man seized on the accent, and began ranting about how he, they, everyone foreign was destroying England, taking English people’s jobs. There was a moment, when he was brandishing the cane and the Asian man admonished him not to hit a woman, that he seemed to somehow register the hole he had dug himself into. Not that he wasn’t genuine in his hostility—but he seemed to realize the role he was playing had swollen into a villain he didn’t intend to be. Admittedly, that could be my idealistic misinterpretation from across the bus in absurdly seeking some redeeming quality to partially neutralize the venom in his words. The word “Brexit” was never pronounced by any of the actors in this exchange, but the incident seemed to me to crisply encapsulate the most controversial and dangerous division between Leave and Remain—which is social, not economic. The empathy in that scene in transit far outweighed the aggression, given the kind actions and reactions of other passengers. On a human level, witnessing the visceral nature of the older man’s hatred made me think that the real cause of most racism must be a wounded dissatisfaction with one’s own life; what if his aggression was the twisted result of his not having anyone to go home to? Maybe we would do well to rectify similar situations through better developed social outreach—in conjunction, naturally, with engaging in dialogue, as the young man did with such dignity, to make real progress against entrenched bigotry. The word “Brexit” was never pronounced by any of the actors in this exchange, but the incident seemed to me to crisply encapsulate the most controversial and dangerous division between Leave and Remain—which is social, not economic. At the end of the day, buses anywhere are stressful, crowded means of getting from point A to point B. But your time onboard is a lot more interesting if you pay attention to your surroundings enough to appreciate exchanges that can broaden your local and universal perspective—and the poignant testimonies to the humanity of your fellow passengers.
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Born in Boston, USA, spent six years in Florence, Italy, and now living in Oxford, UK. Archives
July 2017
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