Bollocks, I’ve dropped the sports section of the newspaper on the floor of the bus. I should probably pick it up. Actually I don’t really want the sports section, but I don’t want to look bad. Now that lady’s trodden on it. Her shoes are really quite ugly. She’s got off the bus. Better pick the newspaper up. Put it back on my lap. I wonder if anyone else on the bus thinks it’s grubby to pick things up off the floor – they’ve got a funny thing here in Brazil with things that have been on the floor. Have a quick look to see if anyone’s looking at me. They are but I can’t really gauge their expressions. I don’t care, really, it’s too hot. Mull over the front page article again – 12 police killings here in Salvador in the first twenty days of the year. Brazilian police kill more than any other force in the world. They are approaching, here, a million deaths at the hands of police in the last 30 years. The paper posits that the police ought to have a strategy that aims to preserve life. I applaud the paper’s stance but marvel that it needs to be stated. Maybe I should stop looking at the paper and turn round and talk to A on the seat behind me....
Those boys who’ve just got on the bus are making a lot of noise. They’re being extremely rowdy. One of them is shouting. He sounds angry. Someone else sounds panicky. These two marching down the centre aisle – one of them has his hand in his shorts, it looks like he’s pretending he has a gun. He’s shouting as well. Maybe he has got a gun. No, I think he’s pretending. How much does it matter? Is this a robbery? Yes. Clearly this is a robbery. Yep. We’re in the middle of a robbery, with guns, on a bus. Bus 174. Bus 174.
All the other passengers are opening their bags. The two boys in the central aisle are marching up and down directing us. The one who had his hand in his shorts is young, maybe 16, 17? They’re calm. They’re not on crack. They look organised. Wallets and phones are being thrown into the central aisle. The two guys are collecting them. The other one is tall, he has a thin, strange face. It’s quite beautiful in a weird way. He’s got a black revolver. His expression is arrogant, and there’s something in his face that looks like he’s enjoying it.
Someone at the front of the bus near the driver is shouting instructions, forcefully, angrily. I don’t understand what he’s saying, just enough to know that he’s shouting threats of what might happen if people don’t cooperate. The guy who was selling sweets a few moments ago is standing with his back to the front windshield of the bus. He looks calm. He’s completely still.
I think about what I have to do. I know the drill for this, I’ve think of all the times it’s been repeated to me. Just give them anything you’ve got. Stay calm. Don’t fuck them about, don’t make them angry. I look at my bag. It’s a beach bag with a towel sticking out of the top. It doesn’t look valuable. I think about what is in my wallet at the bottom of the bag. 65 reales, two bank cards. I wonder if I can just give them the cash, or just the cash and the cards. I look at the other people. Some of them are opening their wallets and handing over cash. The young boy is letting them keep the small change. I know without looking that A is calmly handing over her wallet and our phone. I see her drop it on the floor behind me. I extract my wallet. I have it in my hand. I want them to see that I’ve offered it up; done what’s required of me, I don’t want them to threaten me or search my bag. I pause with it in my hand long enough to hope he’s seen me. I drop it with the others on the floor. What is everyone else doing? I look around, I look at the two young men, what they’re doing, and how. I think they probably don’t want me to look at them so I look at the back of my seat. Out of the corner of my eye I see that not everybody is yielding everything. People are making decisions about what to give up. Some give their whole bags. The boys are not being too cruel. The younger one hands a woman back her handbag in front of me. I decide I don’t need to say anything to A, that it’s best to be silent, that I don’t want them to hear me speak English. I wonder if the Brazilian newspaper on my lap is providing any kind of disguise.
The thought crosses my mind that I could have probably just yielded the cash. Another thought rapidly follows it; how would I construct the sentence in Portuguese to ask them if I could keep my wallet – can I have it back, please? I am immediately amused at the ludicrous suggestions of my subconscious.
I take stock of how I’m feeling and realise my pulse is not beating too hard. I feel calm. I don’t feel sick. I’m pleased about this. I’m conscious that I’ve slipped into a modality that I’ve adopted here when I feel at threat, unsure. Look calm on the outside, move slowly, keep your eyes steady, breathe normally, don’t show signs of alarm. And it’s working. I’m not frightened.
The man at the front is shouting more and more forcefully. It’s coming from the direction of the driver but I don’t want to look. Is the driver telling us what to do? The bus is taking a diversion. This isn’t the way we’re meant to be going. It’s broad daylight and there’s traffic. Are we being taken somewhere? I assess the situation. They want our valuables, then they want off. They’re working quickly and efficiently. They want this to be over as fast and as painlessly as possible, same as us. Everyone is behaving as if this is a procedure. I decide that we’re not going to become hostages.
The bus is jolting, we’re in a tunnel. The bus stops. The men get off. How many? I don’t know? Are they all off? Is it over? The bus starts driving again. The people in the seats next to me get down low behind their seats. I look backwards. Lots of people are doing the same. I think that they are frightened that they will fire at the bus as it is driving away. Though I can’t rationalise why they would, I crouch down too. I’m unsure if it is all finished.
People start talking. It’s a bit chaotic. Some are getting up. There’s stuff on the floor, people are picking it up. Phones are passed around. People are making phone calls. A couple of guys are taking charge of this situation. A and I ask each other, is it finished? It is. The robotic calmness of the other passengers is giving way. People’s emotions are quickly surfacing. The woman to the right of me is getting upset. She is shaken. Others around are the same. Some men are angry. People are passing mobile phones around, lending them to strangers to make calls. I wonder how come they kept theirs?
A is comforting the woman next to her, who needs to talk. Voce fala ingles? A asks her. The woman shakes her head, continues in rapid shaky portuguese. A is holding her hand. I put mine on her arm, we listen to her and nod sympathetically. She is telling us what they took, repeating what they were shouting.
A and I start to debrief. She tells me that there was a man at the front with a gun to the head of the driver. It was him who was shouting. I vaguely recall his face. I’m amazed that I missed this, didn’t register it. I can’t remember seeing his gun.
We wonder where the bus is going. The bus is stopping. The driver is leaning out of the window, we think perhaps he is being sick. Poor fucker.
Some people crowd to the front, demand to be let off. We consult; should we get off? We don’t have any money to get home and we don’t know where we are. We stay put. The bus starts moving again. I’m amazed that the driver has it so together. He seems to know where to take us all. We wonder where we are going.. We hear someone saying that we are going to the police station. We sit back and let it happen. We’re along for the ride now. I really want a cigarette. I wonder if it would be so awful to smoke one on the bus, decide against it. I check how I’m feeling again. Still calm. I wonder whether it will hit me later, whether I’ll suddenly lose control, or crumple, or wake up in the night tonight or in a month or a year, heart pounding with panic. I decide I don’t want to, and that I am somewhat resolutely not moving from this state of calmness. I ask A how she is. She is fine. I know her well enough to expect that she’s not shaken either. “Happy birthday!” I exclaim. We start laughing.
A has been talking to some other English speakers at the back of the bus. One is Irish. I focus on their conversation. We are all laughing wryly at it. They only arrived in Brazil yesterday. Black humour sets in.
At the police station. I smoke a cigarette. The office is tiny. It’s hard to tell who is and who isn’t a police officer. Everyone looks pretty non-plussed. This is the unit for robberies and high-jackings. One by one all the people from the bus are to take a seat at one of these three desks and gives details. It’s clearly going to take fucking ages. We settle in for a long haul.
Outside for a cigarette, A and I realise that we’ve lost, with the phone, the answer phone message which we had meant to record for posterity because it has been making us laugh so much, from our posh antique dealer middle aged ex pat friend in Rio. We lament this, the only irreplaceable thing, and then cheer ourselves up by repeating it to each other for about the hundredth time. “Hello girls, it’s Gaaaaregory! Wondered if you’d like to hook up for a little good-bye drinky-poo….I’ve had a greeeat day, went to the samba school, danced my arse off, then I went to a feijada and had some frankly atrocious food, tasted like a cow had died in it…” etc etc etc.
This is police station, this situation, today, is not the worst place I’ve ever been. Everyone is making friends, they need to talk. We wish we had the language to join in with the general debrief. We get the dictionary out and attempt to get stuck in.
This was a fairly unusual incident, we discover, a bus being hijacked in broad daylight. Before we came here we managed to freak ourselves out at the thought of something like this happening. Since we’ve been here, we’ve calmed down and accepted that it might, if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that there’s no point being frightened in advance. And then it happens - it happens and then it’s over. We don’t feel angry or upset. It happened and then it finished, and no one was harmed. What we lost is irrelevant to us - a couple of credit cards, twenty quid, and a phone that didn’t work properly anyway. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and all that.
But as we eventually get to the front of the queue to have our place in this recorded by the police officer, A and I decide that, if we have been here facing our demons, seeking a thrill (which we’ve talked about quite a bit, interrogating our motives) then we’re now definitely over it. Thanks Brazil, I’ve had my robbed-at-gunpoint moment. It’ll be a good story in the pub one day. But don’t need any more of it, ta.
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