On a Ghost Bus to Nowhere

The bus ride home should have been what it always is: brief and boring. We boarded bus 666. (Not its real number, for bus privacy).

A few minutes later we were almost home, just two left turns to go. But the turns were not to be.

A red ribbon blocked us. We saw no major construction, the kind you see all over the place: no armies of men in hard hats and yellow vests, no evil-looking vehicles with gaping jaws, no thudding jackhammers or piles of red dirt.

What blocked the turn was just a small crew freshening the white lines of a crosswalk. This humble task should not be dismissed. In a big way, visible crosswalks raise the chances that pedestrians will make it across the street in one piece.

AI generated

Unable to turn left, our driver turned right. He passed streets he might have entered to turn around. Instead, he continued straight all the way to Emek Ref’aim, which at this point is still a street and not a multi-year Light Rail construction site.

The driver crawled through heavy traffic, leaving us to wonder what he would do when he got to the end. What he did was to continue onto King David Street, leading us farther and farther from where our bus was supposed to go.

From King David, he turned right and then left up Agron until he approached King George Street, where he turned right toward the center of town. He seemed to be talking to someone, perhaps his dispatcher. Although we could not make out his words, the driver’s body language was not encouraging.

One of the passengers got up and asked him, “Do you know where you’re going?”

“If I turn left here,” the driver said to her, “do you know where that will take me?”

This sounded like a good time to get off. We saw that by crossing the street we could catch the #13 bus (its real number) and finally get home.

Acting more decisive than usual, I walked up to the driver and said, “Let us off there, at that bus stop.” He did, along with the woman who had approached him.

But the other dozen passengers, mostly young adults, stayed on. Where did they think they were going? How were they going to get back when they got there?

I thought no more about this until a brief article crossed my news feed the next morning. It appeared in the Mitzpeh Ramon Herald Advertiser, a local rag that serves the Mitzpe Ramon Anglo community, which, except for guests at 5-star hotels, does not actually exist.

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Lost Jerusalem Bus Fetches up in the Desert

by Snooki Sheftel, Staff Journalist

Your intrepid reporter found some unusual excitement in town last night. Taking my regular evening walk around 21:00, I stopped by the Mitzpeh Ramon Visitor Center, which had closed a few hours earlier. There I found a Jerusalem bus that had apparently gone off course. About a dozen passengers were getting off, looking dazed.

“Where are we?” asked a man in his 30’s, who gave his name as Moti.

“Mitzpeh Ramon,” we told him. “Welcome!”

“Cool!” said Moti. “I never came here before. Where is the crater?”

I pointed.  “This way, chevre!” he called to the other passengers. The machtesh is over here!” The others shuffled after him.

I approached a young woman. She did not want to give her name, because, “There are certain people—I don’t want to say who—that I don’t want to know where I am.”

“You came all the way from Jerusalem,” I said. “Aren’t you all hungry? There’s a Burgers Bar up the road. Closes at 22:00.”

“No, that’s OK,” she said. “I had a bag of pomelos that I opened with my Swiss Army Knife, and we all shared.”

“Chevre, acharai!” called Moti. “Let’s all lie on our backs all night and look at the constellations!” The others seemed to think this was a good idea, and followed.

As I left, I wondered what became of the driver and the bus, both of which seem to have disappeared.

Snooping for news on my regular rounds the next morning I saw Moti, still dazed, leading his disheveled crew back up into town.

“I got some great shots with my iPhone!” Moti told me. “But there was one that was really strange. Have a look.”

AI generated/Freepik