This was his third trip, and he never tired of crossing the gorges of Asia. He changed the music, putting on a cassette tape with a song list he had compiled himself. The first song was by Dalida, an Egyptian singer living in France who was a hit across all of Europe. The passengers’ mood lifted—the nightmare was over.
* * *
—
Rahul noticed that his Brazilian friend had made a full recovery.
“I saw how you faced down that group of thugs in black without much fear. You were ready to fight, but that would have presented a problem for us—we’re pilgrims, not the owners of this earth. We rely upon the hospitality of others.”
Paulo nodded.
“And yet, when the police showed up you froze. Are you running from something? Did you kill someone?”
“Never, but, if I’d been able a few years ago, I would have done it for sure. The problem is I could never see the faces of my potential victims.”
In broad strokes, to keep Rahul from thinking he was lying, he told the story of what had happened in Ponta Grossa. The Indian man didn’t show any particular interest.
“Ah, so you have a fear that’s much more common than you think: the police. Everyone’s afraid of the police, even those who spent their whole lives obeying the law.”
This remark helped Paulo relax. He caught sight of Karla approaching.
“Why aren’t you two with the rest of us? Now that the girls aren’t with us, you’ve decided to take their place?”
“We’re getting ready to pray, that’s all.”
“Can I pray with you?”
“Your dancing is already a form of praising God. Go back to the others and continue what you’re doing.”
But Karla, the second most beautiful woman on the bus, wasn’t about to give up. She wanted to pray as Brazilians prayed. As far as Indians were concerned, she’d already seen them pray several times in Amsterdam, with their unusual postures, the dots between their eyes, that aura as though they were peering into infinity.
Paulo suggested they all join hands. As she was preparing to recite the first verse of a prayer, Rahul interrupted.
“Let’s lea
ve this spoken prayer for another time. Today, it’s better we pray with the body—let’s dance.”
He walked back to the bonfire, and the other two followed him—everyone there saw dance and music as means to free themselves from their bodies. Of saying to themselves: “Tonight, we’re together and happy, despite the efforts of the forces of evil to keep us apart. We’re here, together, and we will continue on together along the road before us, though the forces of darkness seek to block our passage.
“Today, we gather here together, and one day, sooner or later, we must say goodbye. Despite not knowing one another properly, despite not having traded words we might have traded, we’re here together for some mysterious motive we don’t understand. This is the first time that the group has danced around a bonfire as the ancients did at a time when they were closer to the universe and watched the clouds and the storms, the fire and the wind move in harmony across the starry sky and decided to dance—to celebrate life.
“Dancing transforms everything, demands everything, and judges no one. Those who are free dance, even if they find themselves in a cell or a wheelchair, because dancing is not the mere repetition of certain movements, it’s a conversation with a Being greater and more powerful than everyone and everything. To dance is to use a language beyond selfishness and fear.”
And, that night, in September 1970, after being expelled from a bar and humiliated by the police, the people there danced and gave thanks to God for a life that was so captivating, so full of unfamiliar things, so challenging.
They crossed all the republics that formed a country called Yugoslavia (where two more young men—a painter and a musician—got on) without many problems. As they drove through Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, Paulo thought back with affection—but without any regrets—to his old girlfriend, who had taken him on his first trip out of the country. She had taught him how to drive, to speak English, to make love. He gave in to his imagination, and he pictured her, together with her sister, running through those streets and seeking shelter during the bombings of the Second World War.
“As soon as the sirens sounded, we’d run to the basement. My mother would lay us both down across her lap, tell us to open our mouths, and cover us with her own body.”
“Open your mouths? Why?”
“To keep the thunderous sound of the bombs from destroying our eardrums and leaving us deaf for the rest of our lives.”
* * *
—
In Bulgaria, they were continually followed by a car carrying four menacing types—as part of a mutual understanding between the authorities and the bus driver. After a burst of collective joy back at the Austrian border town, the trip was getting a bit monotonous. The plan was to stop for a week in Istanbul, but they still had a ways to go before getting there—in exact figures, a hundred and twenty miles, which was absolutely nothing considering they’d already traveled almost two thousand.