It was the 30th of December, and we’d taken the bus to the waterfront on our first day back in Wellington because five of us couldn’t squeeze into the car. On the way home, Mira and Tulti were sitting in one corner of the last row in an almost empty bus, I was seated to the left in front of them and Abhay and Ashim were together on my right, with Ashim by the window.
Two people were chatting together a few rows ahead of us, an older white man and a (most likely) Arab woman with a headscarf. He was doing more of the talking and she was smiling, looking out the window and turning to him to interject from time to time. They seemed to be friends, and the only reason my eye stayed with them was that there was almost no one else to look at, not even outside (many people were away for their summer holidays: Ashim had commented during our waterfront walk that in India places became this empty only during a curfew or else after a major assassination). Another elderly man was sitting further ahead in the single seat just behind the driver.
Somewhere on Bowen Street, when my attention returned to them, I realised something had changed. The man’s voice was louder now, and the woman wasn’t smiling any more. She was just looking away from him, and as the bus waited at the lights to turn left onto Tinakori Road, she got up and moved past him to the very front, to the first row to the left of the driver.
Her companion hadn’t stopped her, and he didn’t follow, but he did raise his voice, and that’s how we realised he wasn’t a friend at all, or even a rowing spouse. On an empty bus in Wellington, with so many seats to choose from, this guy had placed himself right next to a Muslim woman to harangue her about the recent attacks in Paris! At present he was loudly demanding, ‘Answer my question. Do you know who your son’s friends are?’
I looked across at Ashim and Abhay: we were all watching the scene. The driver in his cubicle was still going, but the other man in the front had turned around once to look at the loud prick. The woman replied to him, ‘You don’t know my son,’ and her gaze took us all in as well. By now she was close to tears.
‘I want your name and address, so that I can tell the police,’ the man said from his seat. The woman didn’t turn around this time. I remembered to look behind me; Mira and Tulti were also watching by now. I told them not to worry; Mira asked why the man was yelling when he repeated his demand with a ‘Do you hear me? I want your last name.’
Abhay too had one eye on the girls, and I realised before he did that Ashim at the window seat was asking him to move aside. Ashim walked past the unhinged man straight to the woman and stood beside her, looked at the man, and asked, ‘Madam, is there a problem?’
She took him in, probably not sure whether someone else had decided to join the baiting crew. The man turned around for the first time, and said, ‘Oh great, there’s more of you on the bus. Is that your son’s mate?’
‘No, I’m not, but I will call the police right now,’ Ashim replied, totally steely, unafraid of sounding foreign (I remember this thought flashing through my head).
If not his voice, then perhaps his standing presence in his peripheral vision must have registered with the driver, who pulled over at the bus stop by the top end of the Botanics even though there were no passengers waiting. He was an older white man, a regular driver on our route, who now came out of his cubicle.
‘This lady was sitting over there, but this man kept disturbing her, so she moved but still he won’t stop,’ Ashim explained. The elderly man on the right nodded. I added loudly from my seat that he hadn’t just been disturbing her, but had been yelling racist abuse, and we were all witnesses.
‘Sir, how far are you going?’
The man didn’t reply.
‘If you say anything more to this lady, I’m going to ask you to get off the bus.’
‘What about him over there threatening me?’
In my own anger, I hadn’t even realised I’d picked up my phone, but at that moment I got up, walked to the front and said, ‘Driver, that’s not enough. I’m going to take a picture of this man in case she wants to file a complaint with the police,’ and I did.
Abhay said from the back, ‘And it’s all on CCTV as well.’
The man said to me that I couldn’t photograph him. I said I just had and if he came any closer, I would include that in the complaint too.
‘Driver, I want to get off this bus. These people are ganging up to threaten me and you’re not saying anything.’
The driver reached into his cubicle and released the middle door. Our charming gent left the bus. The driver returned to his seat, and so did Ashim, after asking the woman once more if she was OK. Her eyes were wet, but she nodded. Playing back what we had seen in my head, I realised that she must have tried to appear relaxed and good-humoured when he showed up next to her, hoping he would say his shit and go away.
We still had a few stops to go, but I didn’t know when she would get off. So I rummaged in my bag quickly for a piece of paper and a pen, and with one of Mira’s markers that happened to be in there I wrote down my name and number in orange neon and walked over to her. If she wanted to file a complaint, we were here as witnesses, and I had a picture on my phone. The other elderly man had got off at the stop near Standen Street. The woman thanked me with a smile, although she still looked shaken. We all said goodbye as we got off a couple of minutes later. Ashim once again urged her, please go to the police. Mira and Tulti waved.
Let the record show that as late as the 30th of December, I was still able to see the good in my brother-in-law, who responded to this woman’s emergency even though he was the unfamiliar visitor, well before my husband or native-born me. My husband, whose name means ‘the fearless one’, who told me that night he was ashamed of his lack of reaction, and ashamed even more of the first thought that had passed through his head when he properly realised what the man had been doing.
‘I thought, if I step in, he’s going to look at Dada and me and all his stereotypes would be confirmed — angry Muslim men ganging up on him. He even used that expression, do you remember, “ganging up”. But I’m sorry, Lena. I’m sorry I didn’t say something. I was five minutes from home, and my brother from Hazaribagh knew the right thing to do.’
He congratulated me as well, and hoped the woman would prosecute, because it would give him a chance to atone. I said I just wanted to nail that bastard.
So my brother-in-law did this good thing. Then we woke up to the new year.