Kidnapped

People have been complaining that my stories have been getting boring. Perhaps this may be considered of some interest to some of the people. I was kidnapped.

It's hard to forget the date, it was on New Years' Eve. We were being driven back from another one of our enticing walks while at our stay at Beit Rimon. Beit Rimon, like most places in this country, is situated on a mountain. This particular mountain would take about two days to mountain climb, so we rented a bus, and had a bus driver come and drive us up and down the mountain.

After spending a good part of my life in the public school system, I have come to meet a lot of bus drivers. This guy was not on the top of the list. Every day, he had, as per instructed, dropped off the counselors at the little cafeteria, where they would do whatever it was they needed to do, while the driver would drive another quarter of a mile, and drop us off.

On this particular day, we had a great deal of stuff with us. It was this particular day that after dropping off the madrichim, that he gruffly said, "OK, everybody off. I only make one stop today." This was met with refusals. A quarter of a mile is nothing for a bus, but it's something completely different for people who had A) walked all day, and B) had bags with them.

All of the Brits went up to complain. Nobody got off the bus. I was ready to pull out my injured leg card if need be, but the others all sat down on the bus, stubbornly waiting for him to drive us to our rooms.

Then, one of the more annoying Brits, Robin, (it's a he, incidentally.) apparently oblivious to the fact that the bus driver had ignored their previous pleas, went to try again. This time, Robin used hus best Hebrew, in an attempt to get the bus driver to comply.

"��� ���� � drive us to our rooms?" {atah yachol le drive us to our rooms?} (could you...) At this, the bus driver turned on the ignition, and decided to drive. Robin sat down, and like his former countryman Chamberlin, he cheered that he was able to convince the man.

We quickly noticed something was wrong. "Uhm, Robin, I think he's going in the wrong direction." Sure enough he was driving us down the mountain. For once, the Brits were actually stunned. Seeing them dumbfounded was a new sight.

After a while, one of the non-Brits went to talk to the driver. "����� ���, ���, ���� ����� �����?" {Slicha nahag, aval eipho anachnu nosim?} (Excuse me driver, but where are we going?)

"����." {Chaifa} (Haifa.)

Without going into comparisons, let's just say that Haifa is not close to Beit Rimon.

I personally had no problem with this. It was December 31st. As it was, we were supposed to be going to Sefad that night, which is one of the most religious cities in the country. Haifa is a genuine metropolis, third largest city in Israel. Easy to hang out on New Years' Eve.

Apparently however, I was in the distinct minority. "Let us off!" "Turn the bus around!" etc. I just sat down, and watched the others scream at the bus driver. I had just been watching them the whole time. It was great fun.

He finally gets to the bottom of the mountain, and due to everybody screaming at him, he hit the brakes. This was a new situation for us; we hadn't been kidnapped before. People were walking up and down the aisles, saying how this was like Speed. It was nothing like Speed, but it was still cool. I was thinking to myself that in the worst possible scenario, I did have a good sized knife with me, but as it was, I was enjoying this. The others were doing their part now, not only screaming at him, but quite a few went up to the front of the bus with their cameras to take his picture, which they said they were going to give to the police. (^No, we don't look like tourists.^)

So, as I said, he stopped. He opened the doors, and said, "OK, everybody get off here!" Nobody did, which was probably good, because the rest of us would have lynched whoever did get off. "Get off the bus!" he roared.

"It'll take us two days to climb up the mountain."

"Well, that's hardly my problem, is it?"

I really wanted him to keep driving. I suppose that technically it may not have been kidnapping, since it was not against my will, per say. So after about ten minutes, when nobody got off the bus, he closed the doors, and continued driving. Around then, about half of the people suddenly saw it from my perspective, and sat back and relaxed. So, he drove on for about twenty miles, with the people who were cursing him out slowly dwindling past three.

Finally, everybody sits down, realizing the futility of their shouting, and we just waited to see what would happen next. He kept driving.

At this point, the real standoff began. He couldn't force us all off of the bus, no matter how loud he screamed. He couldn't turn back, that would mean that we would win, plus he couldn't just give in without a set reason. On the other hand, there's only so far he can drive us, and holding us captive for an extended period of time would produce a similar result as it did in that O'Henry story...Red Chief, I think it was. So, he could only drive, and hope one of us did something stupid.

Just leave it up to us to do it. One of the British girls, Danielle, got up, and started to argue with the bus driver. That gave him reason to 180, and he started back. We began to see that we weren't going to win this one when we told him to pick up the hitchhiker at the botom of the mountain, and he refused.

He drove us back, right to the point where he braked the first time, where he had left the madrichim. At this point, we were all tired, and sick of arguing. Or, perhaps it was that we thought we had won when he drove us up the mountain, but when he pulled up, we all agreed mutually that we'd just walk the rest of the way, hoping to never see the bus driver again.

Get me outa here!!!

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---

Michael Kadish

"Quite a number of people also describe the German classical author, Shakespeare, as belonging to English literature, because -- quite accidentally born at Statford-on-Avon-- he was forced by the authorities of the country to write in English." -- Deutscher und Beobachter, 1940

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