A Ride on Egged Today

There I was sitting toward the front of the Egged No 74 going to Givat Shaul.

I like to watch people, as I find them interesting in many ways. Today my eyes took notice of a little more than middle-aged woman, with nicely bleached grey-blonde shortish hair, grey blue eyes, fine features and blush cheeks. She wore earrings, necklace, pin on her jacket, rings on her well-manicured nails, and her fingers were intertwined so that her rings were almost touching one another. In all, nothing flashy, just a lot of accoutrements that caught my attention. It was her stare that said something. There was no show of emotion on her face, she just stared out the window.

I wonder what she was thinking.

Suddenly the scene changes and I am traveling back in time, to 1943 and the bus was a train. I now saw the lady wearing a nondescript grayish dress, short sleeves, square neckline. Her arms were extended in front of her, her fingers slightly intertwined. Her expression was devoid of emotion. A blank stare that spoke of loneliness, deprivation and muted pain. The loneliness surrounded her as she sat there in the double seat in front of me but next to the window, facing outside.

Then I saw the other passengers wearing that same grayish clothing, a dusty cloud seemed to envelope each and every person on the Egged train to nowhere. My lady was deep inside herself, somewhere perhaps with once grandchildren or maybe tilling her garden, or maybe just gazing back to happier times.

The woman in the seat before me, with her back toward me, was a smallish not skinny brunette. A gray shawl hung around her back and shoulders. She was up and down, discussing something with the ticket-man. Back and forth she went until satisfied she understood his instructions. Once seated she began asking the woman in the seat directly facing her. A smallish woman, definitely a sephardi savta with a teichel held to her whispy hair with two bobbi pins, on either side above the ears. She was very authoritative, and gave precise instructions to the appreciative gray-shawled lady. The train continued traveling to its destination.

After a right turn, my bejeweled lady turned matter of factly to the brunette in the shawl and told her that it was her time to exit the bus.