How They Dive in the Holy Land
Page 63
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
FOR a whole decade, now, it is true, Western methods have been introduced into the Holy Land. But blood is thicker than petrol, and the character of the inhabitants, whether camel drivers or car drivers, will out.
The bus drivers, for instance, are a cheerful and sociable race, but they have an unfortunate habit of carrying on an excited conversation with a passenger while the bus is travelling at 30 m.p.h. If only they would talk with their mouths alone, one could relax in one's seat. But the fearsome part of it is that they talk with their hands, too.
If you watch a bus driver in conversation with a passenger, you will see his hands lift from the steering wheel and make eloquent and meaning gestures. This sort of thing may make for sociability, but not for safety. Sometimes it happens that.the vehicle ought to be steered to the left-hand side of the road, but the driver's hands are to the right of the steering wheel, because that is where the last argument has left them.
Once, when driving along a thoroughfare, the writer nearly collided with an oncoming steam roller. On glancing back, just after his narrow escape, he observed the driver earnestly conversing with-a pedestrian who was trotting
alongside. The driver was half-way out of his seat, with his head close to the face of the pedestrian, and with both hands he was sternly enforcing his argument.
Now the Palestine Automobile Club is distributing thousands of safety-first bills with adhesive backs.
In Palestine, bus drivers have a profound contempt for the desert .air. Once, when driving in theGalilee Plains in the wake of nine touring coaches, the writer and his companions were nearly suffocated from the dust thrown up by their predecessors. The drivers did not dream of slowing down, but mailed pell-mell through the sand and dust, just as though they were driving
on a good modern asphalt road.
Their passengers, it was learned afterwards, were ingrained with dirt, and their clothing and the interiors of the coaches were inches thick with dust.
As for noise—well, Piccadilly Circus or Tower Bridge is a silent cemetery compared with a main road in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.A driver will start at one end of a street and hoot his way down to the other end, just to let people know that he is there.
He is not; however, always to be blamed, for " jay-walking " is an affliction from which all Palestine suffers. People spread out over the roadway, oblivious of everything but their own talk, and only incessant hooting can clear a bare path through them.
We recently learned, however, that a law is to be enforced "which prohibits drivers of stationary vehicles from tooting their horns to attract fares or to announce their impending 'departures! "