airport west.

Heat wave, unwavering.

In a distance, you waved to me a flying kiss. I waved back my flying kiss, and sat down at the front row. A girl with a big backpack came in. An older man in black with white hair came in, waiting for the girl with the big backpack to sit down, but she did not.

“Sorry – I just have to ask something to the driver,” she said, giving way to the older man. The older man smiled and answered intelligibly, but stopped midway, right besides me. Clinging to a pole, he took a second look at the girl with the big backpack.

“Excuse me sir, would you like to sit down?” I asked him.

“Oh,” he said to me, looking at me in surprise, “I have no idea! No, no. I have no idea!” and, as he walked pass me, touched my shoulder and told me, “Relax, just relax.”

So I did. He sat down just two rows behind me and started a loud one-way conversation with someone sitting right next to him. “That Yugoslavian girl,” while the girl with the big backpack asked the driver in an apparently Yugoslavian accent, “she seems to have lost her bag in one of the trams,” said he, while the apparently-Yugoslavian girl continued to ask the driver how to get her bag back. “And the driver has just told her how to get it back,” continued the man in black loudly.

I resisted the temptation of turning my head to take a look at that narrating older man. I looked at the Yugoslavian girl instead – it was much easier. She had a bag of chips in her hand. She sat down, opened the bag of chips and started eating it. She must have been quite hungry. Who knows what she had lost – her passport? Her wallet too. And she would have only had a few gold coins with her, and had to buy whatever she could for dinner. Poor Yugoslavian girl. She looked quite calm for someone who has lost her passport and wallet, though.

Next stop Victoria Market, and she went out. The woman next to me was also looking at the Yugoslavian girl. Or maybe she was looking at me? I resisted the temptation to turn my head and look at her to check whether she was actually looking at me. She sat too close to me for me to do it with subtlety.

“I love the Christians!”

“I love the Christians! The Buddhists! I love the Buddhists too!”

“Long live the Christians! Good Christians!”

This time I couldn’t resist any temptation anymore, and turned my head to look at the source of those yells. The woman sitting next to me didn’t seem to have to resist at all – she immediately turned her head to look. Everyone’s heads in the tram 59 going to Airport West at 10-something that evening were turned around to look at this middle-aged big man, back at the back row, who continued to shout, “Long live the Christians! I love the Christians! I love the Buddhists too!” or at least something resembling that, as his accent made it too unclear to me.

The older man in black with the white hair started answering him. “Yes! The Christians! What about them?”

“I love the Christians! I love the Christians!”

“Yes, but you are still quite young! Calm down! Be quiet!”

Out loud. The middle-aged big man continued to shout something like either “Long live the rich!” or “I hate rich people,” and the man in black shouted back, “Why are you going to Richmond? Why Richmond?”

“I’m going to Richmond!”

“You’re on the wrong tram then, my friend!”

“I’m going to Richmond!”

“Why? Why do you want to go to Richmond?”

“I love the Christians! I love the Buddhists! You killed all the Aborigines!”

“You still want to go to Richmond?”

“You killed all the Aborigines! You, white people, you! White people! Killed all the Aborigines!”

The woman sitting next to me gave up trying to compose a message on her mobile phone, shook her head, turned her head to the direction of those two men in intense long-distance colloquy and whispered loudly. It sounded like “Mori! Be quiet!”

She then went back to her TXTing, shook her head again, and said loudly while looking at her mobile, “Ssssoooossssh!”

I looked at her for the first time. If she was not those men’s some sort of guardian, why did she tell them to be quiet? I wondered. If she was those men’s some sort of guardian, why are all of them sitting separately? She continued TXTing.

Quiet. For a while. The tram was full of people but no one made a single sound.

“You see, it might sound scary, but when you think about it, it actually doesn’t affect you at all. You don’t have to be afraid. Nobody cares! Nobody is paying attention.”

The man in black continued in a lower volume, “I’m talking to you, boy! No fear. You don’t have to fear.” It sounded like he started talking to someone just behind me.

A woman’s voice suddenly emerged from behind me. “He’s fine. And you should stop. Both of you. Stop it, now.” She sounded like she was scolding two grade-twos.

But the big man started shouting again.

“You killed all the aborigines! You white people! You white people! I’m Turkish! I’m Turkish!”

I couldn’t decide whether I should feel relieved to finally hear something about his cultural rootedness.

“I’m Turkish! You all white people! You are all racists! You are racists! This is a racist country!”

A few people walked towards the front door. The scolding woman behind me walked up to the front as well, with her son. She was smiling awkwardly and her son didn’t look fearful. I wondered whether it was really their stop. Perhaps they just couldn’t take the shoutings anymore. I turned my head and saw the Turkish man standing next to the rear exit. The tram stopped and he walked down saying “This is a racist country!” It was hard to tell whether he was satisfied with his declaration – with my limited neck-rotating ability I could barely see his face.

As the tram started to pick up speed again, the man in black made a sound between giggling and laughing.

“Life can be easier,” he said, sighing. Not shouting this time.

The guardian woman sitting next to me turned to me, looked at me in the eyes, and said, cynically,

“Life can be easier if people stopped drinking.”

I looked at her. Her smile to me was bitter. I gave her a child-like smile, an understanding one, perhaps not as bitter as hers.

The next stop was not my stop – but I decided I’d rather go out and walk.

“Have a good night,” I said to her, right at the end of the tram’s pulling of its brake. She smiled, less bitterly, “Good night,” she said to me.

I almost ran out, quickly saying thanks to the driver. Looked like an Indian woman. Middle-aged.

Australia Day, I thought. Forty-something degrees. A few years ago, someone told me there is a National Barbecue Day in Australia. This must be it, I thought. My sandal snapped.