It is an adventure, commuting in Beirut. There's always something unexpected because the buses, like the city and like the country, do not care for formality. I have to explain a few things about Lebanese buses. There are two kinds. The first category is that of the official, national buses -- those we call "bus eddawle". They are large, modern-looking like anywhere else in the world, satisfactorily clean, with smoking not allowed on board. They stop at bus stops -- but this is Lebanon so if you're a distance from one, you just wave at the driver. Similarly, if you want to get off at any time you can ask him to drop you, or pull a string that has been added to the ceiling of all the buses -- it runs from the front to the back and rings a bell next to the driver so you won't need to shout at the top of your voice (but many do anyway, at least to say thank you). You better time your move right because given their (far from legal) speed, they need a while to slow down.

Often upon arriving at a stop, the driver looks around for running people and asks with a tilt of the head if you want on, so he can wait for you. The passengers usually keep an eye out as well -- over here one's business is everyone's business. If noone sees you running desperately to catch it, and you're about to have the frustrating experience of reaching the bus just as it pulls away, you can always slam your fists on the coachwork -- that's loud enough for them to hear and tell the driver "Easy! Let her on."

The "dawle" buses use tickets. It's fairly routine: you give a coin to the driver, who detaches a ticket from his booklet and hands it to you. If you have no change, the driver takes your money while you sit down and will send you the change when there is some -- usually asking another passenger: "Say, give that to the demoiselle will you?". If you can't reach your money, he'll tell you to take your time and go sit down, and then you can return with it later. Once when the bus was packed full, and the driver had for some reason asked several passengers to pay later (the machine was jammed, maybe), money was sent to him from hand to hand and the tickets sent back the same way. Every now and then a controller boards the bus and checks the tickets, then hops off again.

The other category is that of private buses: small vans, generally filthy, crammed full with people one wouldn't like to rub elbows with, and impossibly slow because they want to make sure they don't miss any potential passenger on the road. As you guessed, they take no notice of bus stops -- you wave at them to get on, and shout "Here please!" for them to drop you. No tickets and no controller there, but the driver has a "helper" to stand at the door (which is never shut, thank god or I'd suffocate) and constantly call out the names of the areas the bus serves: "Cola Barbeer, Mathaf Dawra Jounieh Jbeil!" (The latter is Byblos). As "dawra" means "round", drivers of all buses will tirelessly draw a circle in the air with their finger to let the pedestrian know they can take them there. It took me a while to figure that out. The "helpers", who are agile and quick and keep jumping off and on to let people on or off, also handle the money collecting every now and then. In those buses you don't pay when you get on (although I do to get it over with): you just sit down and wait for him to come and collect. They never forget who paid and who hasn't. If they do forget, they ask you if you paid, and will never have the dishonorable attitude of doubting your word.

Why take those filthy buses, you may ask? Because there's one every 5 minutes, and I often prefer to endure them rather than to wait up to 20 minutes for the "real" ones. I'm usually the only woman on board (few women are crazy enough to use these) but the drivers and helpers immediately consider me their responsibility. Their attention and courtesy towards young women is both touching and comical. "Let the bride down", once said the helper to the driver (men often call women "bride" the way westerners would say "young lady"). "May God make her a bride", came the blessing as he pulled to the side to let me off. A helper (they're often teenagers) once noticed a weird guy sitting next to me, and after meeting my gaze asked him to change his seat. He refused but I appreciated the attention anyway.

Besides the above reasons, those buses are used by the popular classes and that makes them the most fun sometimes. Every now and then the helper feels like adding spice to his destination-calling: "Cola Barbeer, Mathaf Dawra... Tripoli... Damascus... Amman... Cyprus!..." Tripoli could be believable although it's far up north. Damascus, capital of Syria, and Amman, capital of Jordan, are a bit more difficult, and as for the island of Cyprus... I also remember one helper who turned it into a rap sequence: Co-la, co-la, cocococola... Dawra dawra dadadawra, rara...

My most surreal bus episode was when I boarded an empty van driven by a young man. A woman, probably his fiancÂ?e, was next to him on the passenger seat. "Miss, I have a question to ask you if you don't mind." I braced myself for something embarrassing, but I wasn't prepared for what followed: "If a woman is driving a man's fiancée crazy in his own house, should he allow it or kick her out?" He was asking my opinion as to what he should do with his mother, who was a pain in the neck to both of them.

The unofficial buses do not have the monopoly of fun, though. The dawle ones are something of a circus as well. I was fascinated to hear a zajal once. The zajal is a form of poetry contest; two opponents improvise and sing poetry rhymes each in his turn, and the audience is supposed to punctuate the exchange with Ah!s and Eh!s. This is usually done on occasions during traditional meals attended by dozens. That time the driver and the controller were doing the improvising, and the passengers punctuated.

Bus drivers have a zany sense of humor that passengers gladly return. "What's your route?" asked a lady upon boarding. "Well, where are you going?" She hardly hesitated before answering "I'm going to France". I remember vividly one controller who was in a particularly good mood, and as he checked the tickets went: "Grazie signor... Gracias Amigo... Grazie contessa... Danke schon..."

On a hot day, the driver took advantage of a traffic jam to send the controller down to fill up some bottles with water from a fountain -- which he then offered the passengers. Often in the small buses the helper is sent running to buy some cigarettes or coffee for the driver -- and he has to run back to catch up with the bus, which can't stop completely because of the traffic. I always wonder if this time, we're going to lose the helper. Once it was a shopkeeper that came running up to the bus to ask the driver to make some change for him.

Often I witness scenes that are downright touching. A group of beggar kids once came up to the door and coyly wheedled "Can we ride?" The driver let them on, free of charge, pretending he hadn't seen them. Another time, a lady boarded who was obviously handicapped: her body was very shaky and she seemed simple-minded. The driver took one look at her and invited her to sit down, refusing her money. When she reached her stop, he had a word with the controller and the latter helped her down, across the street, and held her arm all the way home.
Such tenderness is not wasted on the rude however. "The one who has a cigarette puts it out NOW", roared one driver to someone who was ignoring the sign.

There is a lot more to commuting in Beirut -- if you think the buses are funky, check out the Services!

Article © Joumana Medlej