The furgon (van) is already full when it arrives, but then full is not a number here. Full is a mood, a negotiation, a flexible philosophy shaped by heat, proximity, and the driver’s private sense of reality. The door slides open anyway. A man gets out. Two women get in. Someone shifts a generous three inches.
I step in last, the only intelligent decision available, and immediately violate a system I do not understand. Boarding is less an act of sequence than of memory. The furgon remembers who entered first, who belongs to which arc of the route, who will dissolve into the sidewalk sooner rather than later.
Order is not enforced. It is inferred. Sit too deep, commit the minor error of permanence on a short journey, and I become a problem that must later be solved with knees and apologies. And a chorus of commentary I cannot translate but fully understand.
The road climbs out of Sarandë as the sea drops away behind us. Inside the van, the geometry tightens. A bag shifts. A shoulder rotates. Someone laughs, or protests, or both. It is difficult to tell. Language is only part of the system. Tone does the rest.
“Afër zbres,” I declare. I get off soon. Less a statement than a passport. With those two words, I am recalibrated from disruption to passing detail. The furgon adjusts around me, not for me but with me, which is the closest thing to acceptance available.
There is no map for this. There is only participation.
By the time we reach my stop, the choreography is in full swing. The subtle unwind. The flash dance of arrival. No one is surprised. That is the entirety of it. Not comfort. Not efficiency, or fairness. Only the avoidance of surprise.
I disembark as the furgon reseals itself, forgets me, rebalances for the next act.