Fire! En bus to New York.

                                                                      Photo of the bus and the asian girl

Text date: November 12th, 2010. 

Translation date: December 30, 2022.


Fire! En bus to New York.

In the month of August (2010) I went with my aunt on vacation to New York City and for a moment we thought we were going to die.

Vacationing consists of letting yourself get lost among the hidden charms of the unknown, but that ended up being a reflective trip linked to danger. Friday the third, four o' clock in the afternoon. The day is rainy and my head is cloudy. I am spending time in one of the internet rooms of the Cambridge Main Library in Boston. My aunt and I agreed to meet at five o'clock. Half an hour later I'm riding my bike back to take a shower and pack my luggage. We meet in Central Square as agreed, we make several transactions with an ATM and the human from a Dunkin Donuts on Mass Ave., to take the red subway line from there, change to the green one and get to the MBTA station, where we would hopefully board the 6 o'clock bus to the Big Apple. And so it was... 

I am one of the people who enjoy the journey of their travels. I usually demand window seats on planes to only see clouds, and mountains from buses. Fung Wah offers a cheap transportation service, but is it also safe? My aunt asks me for the window seat and I accept; maybe we swap at the rest stop in Connecticut. 

The trip is going very well. An hour has passed and we continue down Interstate 95 highway towards the Empire State. Meanwhile, me and my aunt talk about family and reminisce about our last trip to New York together eight years ago, because that was a story to remember and because driving lost in Manhattan for hours with tremendous downpour and without GPS looking for the exit to Nyack to end up sleeping in a van, it turned out at that moment to be simply too exciting! And after talking and remembering I find out almost by accident that they have wi-fi on the bus. I connect to disconnect; my aunt also goes online and shows me the photos she posted on Facebook of her visit to Haiti after the earthquake and before cholera: a sad reality. 

Time passes. Maybe she, with luck, managed to close her eyes for a moment. Suddenly the bus starts to stop; I have the feeling of being in my country. What's happening? The driver opens the door and allows a uniformed man to come in the bus, a policeman. The policeman was the one who ordered the driver to stop. So that? I try to find the answer in the faces of my aunt and the other passengers but I only manage to get more confused. We do not understand what is going on here.  "You  sir, stand up and please follow me,"  the police officer orders a passenger located in the first row of seats. My aunt and I see them from behind. But "what was it that I did wrong, officer", "I  haven't done anything wrong …" to which the policeman responds: " I know very well what you did. Come with me now". And in the middle of that scene we all found ourselves, looking at the faces of the suspicious passenger and the policeman, trying to understand what was happening. Surely this passenger did something wrong. We don't know much about the victim in this scene, but he is the one sitting next to the guy they want to take out of the bus for some reason. Later we will find out that it was the complainant who made the call to 911 from his mobile phone to make the complaint: sexual harassment, "sobadera", dominican slang yes...

The victim would have been very specific when reporting the incident because the policeman knew which bus he had to stop, among so many; and which passenger should be taken, among many. The accused of harassment was about sixty years old, dressed in a jacket and tie, had a hat, carrying a briefcase... and at another time in this same story we will see him smoking a pipe, like those executives who enjoy their business trips. And despite the fact his clothes gave him the appearance of a friendly traveler, it was also true that now we see him with the face of an embarrassed loser with no word... but he was lucky, and instead of being taken by the police, the offender found his good Samaritan, another passenger, of color, who went down to history with the following line: "I  can switch with him, officer."

The accused of harassment and the color man switched seats. And with the situation resolved, the agent says goodbye, while I reiterate my perception that New York is an interesting city for many reasons.

Outside it is getting dark...

I find myself laying back listening to the song "Missing the Light of the Day" by Air repeatedly: sadaly genius. Perhaps fifteen minutes have passed after the episode between the policeman and the two passengers when suddenly the Chinese bus driver starts to stop the bus again. And now what happens? What do those passengers at the back of the bus are saying? The passengers in the last rows are looking for something behind the windows, have they seen an accident? What the fuck is happening now is the attitude. And among the bewilderment, doubt and despair of those who do not know what is coming but know that it is not good, smoke appears from the engine located in the back of the bus.

  Fire! yells a woman. 

And it was from that moment on when panic did to us what it usually does to people when they think they are going to die; that highly contagious that usually increases the number of victims in emergency situations and that is generally accompanied by pushing, stomping, pulling and headaches.

 "Oh  my God, the bus is going to explode,"  shouts a woman in the middle of the corridor... And for an instant we thought we were going to die. 

The smoke can make you faint, the fire chars but an explosion will blow you to pieces. "Go  go go go!" said a passenger behind me, with the voice of a deprogrammed toy. But there was no explosion. 

We all manage to escape the danger and we are already safe, off the bus, on the highway. And it was precisely at that moment when me and my aunt found this scared asian girl, and as she wouldn't have that scared face, we would say that she is one of those executive women who enjoys their business trips. She was walking on the edge of the highway as if she was lost (very scared). My aunt hugs her to comfort her. "Everything's alright" , I tell her, feeling something in my heart. "Really?" She answers me, looking into my eyes, as if she's been told she could see again after being blinded in quarantine and José Saramago. 

That seemed to be a moment of glory and it was in that drizzle in the middle of nowhere that I felt that I had the protection of a greater force; maybe it's God. And just like in scenes from american movies, the firefighters suddenly appeared between the highway lights, wearing heavy uniforms, carrying their flashlights and precise instructions. 

The first thing the firefighters did was fence off the area, setting the perimeter established in their protocols. The young Asian woman is calmer and now everything she tells us is accompanied by a nervous smile, surely because after believing that she would die, she remembered that by simply being alive she had reasons to be happy. 

I look to my left and see two firefighters trying to give an instruction to the chinese bus driver (who doesn't speak English). To my right is the accused of harassment smoking his pipe, like an executive man enjoying a business trip. The accused of harassment offers an umbrella to the Asian woman with natural cordiality, she accepts. 

Everything now seems under control...

A passenger crosses us and asks if we have seen his missing luggage. My aunt is missing a shoe. We all now ask ourselves the same question: When will we reach our destination? How will we get to New York? 

The Asian passenger now serves as a translator for the Chinese bus driver who doesn't speak English: "He says there's another bus in its way and it will be here in about an hour".  A message for all.

 There is no smoke anymore.  "You  guys can wait inside the bus" , says the last firefighter and also says "Goodbye".

 Inside the bus still smells like something's burning but the Wi-Fi is still working. I took the time to post on Facebook a photo of the bus with this story (which really happened as it's being told here). It shows part of what happened. My aunt and I amused ourselves by reading the comments that my friends in the Dominican Republic were leaving:

  - "They are sued for the scare and emotional damage!" 

- "Let's go find a couple of peso$"

 - "Hey, but if it were here, one would go to knock-down the accused of harassment and take the secret to the grave"

 - "I imagine myself being in that situation, there's always an old lady who gets sick" 

- "Cousin, this is a good opportunity to get rich..." 

During that wait my aunt receives several calls and sends some text messages from her mobile phone. The next bus finally arrives and the rest is another story.

Sunday August 5th, eight o clock pm. My aunt and I are coming back to Boston. No news about the bus that took us back. It is not necessary to mention that for the return trip we chose to use the service of another transport company other than Fung Wah. 

 New York was an experience on all levels. The backpacks are now heavier. And guess what! We saw the same asian woman who was in the bus with us on the outbound bus. What a coincidence! And there, as we rode the subway, she, holding on to one of the train tubes for balance, the asian woman told us about her days in New York. She did very well, she said. She told us she had a meeting with a client on Saturday morning and that she spent the rest of the weekend at a friend's house… like an executive who knows how to enjoy her business trips. I returned to Santo Domingo the next day and I did not become a millionaire. 

Now Tia Ana asks me when our next trip to New York is going to take place. New adventures, as always...