A Blink from a Bus

Elbasan, Albania Oct 2024

I’m on a bus from Berat to Elbasan, Albania. 

I wish I could describe what I am seeing, but I can’t fully describe it, I can only fully see it. I see it so vividly that I think, I must record this, but I’m also overwhelmed by the knowledge that I can’t record it accurately enough. I wish you could just see it. But no one else will ever see the exact sight I just saw. It was so simple, and so fleeting, as most beautiful things are. I absorbed it all in a matter of seconds as we drove down the road, enough for a snapshot, but the visual will only ever be mine alone. I will try to describe it, and what I come up with will just have to be good enough.

We just passed through a village where, from my perfect window seat, I watched rows and rows and produce stands in the local market pass by. I caught glimpses of bags overflowing  with potatoes, burlap sacks of lentils, rice, beans, and nuts still in the shells.  Crates of pomegranates, tangerines, grapes, pears, onions, tomatoes, eggplant, and colorful peppers. A huge Turkish coffee grinder. Bundles of dried herbs and mountain tea flowers hang from tent poles. People walk up and down the aisles, filling their bags, old women in long skirts stooped over as they drop coins into the hands of vendors. Bicycles lay against tree trunks and truck beds. Weeds and flowers sprout wildly throughout the lot and uneven sidewalk cracks. The patio of the gas station cafe next to the market is full of Balkan men with tanned and wrinkled faces talking, drinking espresso and smoking, wooden canes leaned against chairs. A huge orange tree grows over the neighboring fence, dropping some fruits that tried to make it to market of their own volition but were left behind, too plentiful. 

My bus has kept moving, back on the highway now, but real life is still happening back there in the market.