Queues

The new world! We didn’t think we’d make it, but here we are, dirty
and dishevelled in the airport. We can’t find an exit. Up the stairs
and down the stairs. We sit in the rocking chairs and ask Sal to find
the way out.

There’s a lot of queuing in the new world, we decide. First of all,
the security lines at the airport, which go on forever, and which
everyone endures with great patience. Americans are a patient people, we decide. For his part, W. copes badly with queuing. He’s visibly vexed. Sal is worse. She wants to punch someone, she says. W. notes that I don’t seem to mind queuing. It’s because you’re a Hindu, he says. Hindus are a stoical people, he says.

In the Greyhound bus station, our bus is delayed for many hours. No one tells us over the tannoy. We’re left to find this out for ourselves. Our fellow passengers don’t care. They’ve seen it all. Nothing surprises them. They’ve always been treated like shit and it’s likely they’ll go on being treated like shit. A policeman with a gun in his holster stands behind a counter watching us all. Meanwhile a TV on Weather Channel blares out a documentary on plane crashes.

Sal offers everyone Gummi Bears. W. and I sit on the floor and eat barbeque flavour popcorn and he asks for Hindu stories. I tell him about Sati and Shiva, and how her father came back to life with the head of a goat. Then I tell him about Ganesha, and how it came about that he had the head of an elephant. The queue isn’t moving. Nothing’s happening. We Hindus are used to such things, I tell W.