The Bus Stop

After reading the first few pages of my book, I am already shocked. It started with the narrator, a Palestinian high school girl, riding a bus from Birzeit back to her hometown Ramallah, but then all of a sudden her bus comes to an army checkpoint and the bus is stopped. A soldier gets on board and starts yelling at the passengers, asking them where they are going before the narrator chimes in, “Ramallah.” However, the soldier says that Ramallah is no longer there and it is gone, then he orders the bus driver to take the bus to the Military Rule Center, which the narrator says is the prison-court military compound. Now, the narrator and the rest of the bus passengers have been held at the military compound for hours and are not provided with any food or water and they are not told why they are not able to leave.

It shocks me that life is like this in other countries. I understand that a lot of countries are not as well off as we are in the United States, but the people in the book are basically kidnapped and held against their will by the army. This makes me realize that I should not take my life for granted. I am blessed enough to live in a country where I do not have to deal with this type of ordeal and I need to live each day like it is my last and stop taking it for granted.

I am only a few pages in, but this is a very intriguing start and I am interested to see what will happen to the narrator and the rest of the bus passengers.