What if you can’t afford to anything else than the local bus?

‘There is your bus’, the driver said in his broken English. ‘Many people. Be careful’

I look across the crowded bus terminal. There were hundreds of people crammed into the tiny space. The sight of the main bus terminal in Lahore was rather chaotic: people jumping out of ricksaws and cars and running for their buses; young mother carrying their crying babies while trying not to get run over by cars; a young man carrying a chicken on one shoulder and a basket full of wool on the other shoulder; bus horns tooting; relative shouting their goodbyes to those boarding the buses. 

I got off the car and walked to the main ticket counter on the other side of the terminal. There were ten different queues wavering across the room. I looked at the signs in front of the queues and tried to figure out which one I should head for. Fortunately my short Urdu course had paid off and I could understand which queue was meant for Rawalpindi. As I stepped to the end of the queue, I noticed that some of the queues were for men only and others for women only. 

I stood behind a pair of women who were both wearing hijabs, the head scarves. They glanced looks at me and smiled. ‘You can go before us’, one of them said and gestured at the spot in front of them.   

‘Oh no thank you’, I smiled. ‘You have been here for longer than me.’

They looked at each other, sniggered and started speaking in Punjabi. Unfortunately, Punjabi was too different from Urdu for me to understand any of what they were saying. 

Finally it was my turn to get my ticket. The ticket seller was a boy who did not look much older than fifteen and who did not seem to understand much English. With a mixture of broken Urdu and sign language I managed to buy my ticket. 

As I was about to leave, an elderly woman appeared by the side of the boy. ‘You beautiful’, she said. ‘You be careful. You not killed. No checks, no security.’ She pointed towards the buses at the yard. 

‘Ah, thank you’, I mumbled without fully comprehending what she was trying to get across to me. 

I understood soon enough: as we all left our luggage in the hold and entered the bus, there were no security checks. No one check any of the luggage and no one examined any of us. We could have carried anything onto the bus with us. 

I sat on the seat that had been allocated to me. How had this happened? How did I end up travelling from Lahore to Rawalpindi on my own on Christmas Eve, in our of the most dangerous and insecure times  that Pakistan had faced in the past decade, on a bus that was let to leave one bus terminal freely without any security checks and with potential bombs in the hold? 

I stared out the window. The mosque minares and the eucalyptus trees looked stunning against the bright sunshine. How had this amazing country ended up in such a mess? When would it come out of it? 

‘Excuse me’, the lady sitting next to me touched my arm. We were sitting in the ladies’ section on the right side of the bus. Men were sitting on the left side of the aisle. “Do you want some?’ She held out a packet of crisps. They were roast chicken flavour.

‘Oh no, thank you’, I shook my head and smiled. 

‘Why not’, she said in a louder and more aggressive voice, as if she was offended by me not wanting her crisps. 

‘I am vegetarian. I don’t eat meat’, I explained. Funny that, despite the fact that I was siting there thinking that I could be blown into pieces any minute, the most significant thing I remember about this trip is the lady’s smile as she offered the crisps to me.