Motaz Omarien
We have become a kindergarten on the bus.
They were never lords in their own lands; we discovered that they are the dregs in the land they came from.
Why does Palestine come to my mind at once?
In the bus journey I find a pleasure — in discovering characters; it ought to last more than twenty-four hours by bus, to lay bare the truth of the characters.
And the two Black men who wear a cap of the newest design have become two friends who never stop talking.
He puts a ring on his finger, and wipes his face every time he speaks.
With a white cap, and looks into his eyes, to see whether he has understood the sarcastic joke about this system they live under.
On the bus there are two kinds of passengers: the long-distance ones, and they are the most wretched, and the short-trip ones, who want to reach their destination. With a few exceptions, among them that Amazigh Moroccan who belongs to rap, standing between the civilization of the Eiffel Tower and the tagine, lost between a Parisian perfume on the breast of a migrant woman and the smell of cooking at his mother's.
And until we arrive at the borders of final lostness, let us talk, let us contradict one another, let us venture into the existence of passing friends on the bus. For they are all passers-by: in the neighbourhood, among the neighbours, among the family, and in the bars. And the relationships of buses will not stop at this limit, for we migrants are used to being struck. And we are not like what Christ said of us: "Turn your right cheek to the one who strikes you on the left." For we refuse to be struck on the left, and we remain our whole life being struck on the right, and principles are not divisible. And death is one.