I feel a pull at my trouser leg while I wait for the light to turn green. I glance down to my right and there he is. He has the bluest of eyes and a full beard, and surely, I think, Jesus Christ has stepped down from his cross from a Renaissance painting and is taking a break at this chaotic intersection. He reaches out his hand, glancing up, and I reach for my camera, looking down.
This is the central bus terminal in southern Tel Aviv, Israel. The final station for the wretched of the earth. It is where Eritrean, Congolese, Darfurian and Sudanese refugee seekers wait to receive news of their asylum status. It is the outpost where homeless men and women wilt into wiry embryonic forms lodged onto the intestinal walls of this architectural beast. It is the gathering place for pimps and prostitutes with a practised eye on the lookout for the police. It is where drug addicts and the insane lurk high and low in the shadows throughout this Wasteland.
And all the while the rushing masses weave in and out within this morass of humanity, hustling and bustling to catch their rides on time to transport them to wherever it is they need to get to in such a hurry.
I make my way back home.
