bus trips

I finally finished the Jason Elliot book I've been reading about Iran. I think I shall grace you with some passages over the next few days. Any of you who have ever taken a long-distance bus or train ride will relate to the excerpt below, I’m sure.

(Mirrors of the Unseen, p 385-386)

I knew the routine quite well. … There is a teenage girl two rows behind you, sobbing at her parting from loved ones, a crying baby, a crone with a piercing voice, and a young man with wild eyes who looks as though he’s on the run. There is always the same glare returned from the landscape, and the same line of mountains in the distance, glimpsed in half-sleep from curtains which emit little clouds of dust like a puff-ball as you try to shake them free from the railings overhead; a ruined fort shimmering in the heat-haze which you wish you had the time and means to visit, and a bad film played on the television with the volume turned up too loud. Then long stretches, when you find yourself contemplating your motives and achievements, ambitions, and lost opportunities, resolutions, the spectre of unwritten letters, kindnesses you have forgotten to repay, scores you’d like to settle but know you never will, plots for short stories you’ll never write, severed fragments of dreams and conversations ---plans ----hopes---until your head finds the niche between the adjoining seat, and sleep closes in on you.