Get on the bus

Saloon The Eid exodus caused low-level chaos at the Abu Dhabi bus station, says John Gravois. DubaiDubaiDubaiDubai!

Fast exit: The first day of Eid saw the Abu Dhabi bus station inundated with people looking to leave the city.

The Eid exodus caused low-level chaos at the Abu Dhabi bus station, says John Gravois. DubaiDubaiDubaiDubai!
All through the morning and afternoon on the first day of Eid al Fitr, taxis attempting to turn into the Abu Dhabi bus station clogged two and sometimes three lanes of Muroor Road. It looked like a D-Day of cabs - but the purpose at hand was evacuation, not invasion. The Eid holidays are among the busiest times of year for the bus station, a set of turquoise pavilions arrayed around a massive concrete swoosh that forms the roof of the main terminal. For anyone who lacks family in Abu Dhabi, a vehicle of his own or enough money for air fare, the bus station is the main ticket out of town. Hence the squalling vehicle horns, gridlocked vehicles and sweating crowds.

At around two in the afternoon, Ryan, a Filipino man trying to reach Sharjah, was wiping his forehead with a folded plaid handkerchief as he paced among the Pathans and Punjabis stuffing themselves into minibuses along the kerb. He had already been waiting for an hour and a half. "There's not enough buses," he said meekly, which seemed to be the general sentiment at the station's minibus terminal, despite the apparently ceaseless logjam of empty white vans queuing up for the passenger loading area.

Barkers wove through the crowded pavilions calling out destinations. Somehow they all followed a remarkably consistent pattern, shouting the name of their destination five times and then gesturing towards the correct bus: "DubaiDubaiDubaiDubaiDubai!" or "ShargahShargahShargahShargahShargah!" - a hard "g" in place of the "j". The whole atmosphere was an odd mix of gruffness, annoyance and festivity. One brawny man in shalwar kameez progressed in a matter of seconds from shouting, to gesticulating angrily to hugging someone.

After 29 smokeless, drinkless and snackless days of Ramadan, the dim, peeling restaurant at the minibus terminal was doing brisk business. The rubbish bins outside were overflowing with empty cans and bottles, the concrete floor around them sticky with evaporating Fanta. The butts of cigarettes - smoked in broad daylight! - littered the grass near a patch of trees where travellers sheltered from the sun.

Women were a rare sight among the minibuses, while bachelors were as common as price hikes. An Arab engineer named John, carrying a briefcase and wearing pointy-toed loafers, a black suit and a black-and-white striped tie, wandered from minibus to minibus, brusquely turning away whenever a driver told him that the standard Dh20 seat cost Dh40 today - as all the drivers seemed to be doing. Just across the station from the roiling confusion of the minibuses, there was another set of pavilions where the scene was entirely different. Here an extremely long, orderly and fast-moving line of travellers was being loaded onto large buses leaving at 15-minute intervals at the cost of Dh15 per seat. A Keralite man wearing a Transportation Department polo shirt patrolled the line with a bullhorn to keep things moving.

It was like the two parts of the bus station appealed to radically different temperaments: people willing to sacrifice immediacy for order, and vice versa. Taxi drivers patrolled the middle ground between the two terminals, hoping to pick off people who got exasperated with either approach. As evening settled in, the lines dwindled a little. The last rounds of travellers for the day were nodding off, and I wandered into the main terminal building. Oddly, the second floor of the terminal houses a restaurant that specialises in parties and receptions. Incongruous with the welter of activity outside, the station restaurant boasts recessed ceiling panels with art nouveau chandeliers and walls draped in maroon curtains.

That night, a Somalian Eid party was getting underway. A DJ was spinning Beat It and Thriller by Michael Jackson. The party was scheduled to last until about 4am. Soon after that, another holiday exodus would commence from the bus station. By the end of that second day of Eid, though, the restaurant manager assured me, "Abu Dhabi will be empty."
[e-mail]