A teenage girl had fallen into a wide ditch, her forearm and cheek shattered. It was clear that the bone in her right forearm had shifted beneath her dark blue manteau, with blood seeping through the fabric. Her cheek was split wide open, and her wheat-coloured face was drenched in blood.
Her broken arm was twisted outward at an unnatural angle, revealing a white sports watch with a cracked face. The ditch was full of sludge, and the girl’s struggles had churned the filth around her. She lay submerged in the muddy, bloodied water, uttering only silent moans.
Her eyelids fluttered open and closed. A fringe of hair fell sorrowfully across her forehead, and her grey headscarf, wrapped tightly around her neck, seemed to choke her voice. She breathed in rapid gasps, her nostrils flaring and contracting. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Two labourers in threadbare military uniforms and forage caps without peaks, together with a street vendor, were trying to lift her out.
“Shall we call an ambulance?” asked the vendor, turning to the labourers. “Do you have a phone?”
“No need,” one of the labourers replied. “I’ll grab her from behind by the headscarf, and you two each take a leg. We’ll lift her all at once. That way she won’t have to bear the pain of putting her feet on the ground. She’ll spring up in one go. Then you let go of her legs quickly. She’ll be able to stand on her own two feet after that. Can you manage, girl? Her hand isn’t too badly broken. After all, even a chicken can stand on two legs — why shouldn’t she?”
The girl was weeping copiously, writhing in pain. Her bag had fallen open and her Persian textbook lay half-submerged, sinking slowly into the sludge.
A woman arrived holding a basket of herbs, thick pebble-like glasses perched on her nose. “How can you pull the poor girl out like that?” she snapped. “You’re not specialists. An ambulance crew should come and put her properly on a stretcher.”
One of the onlookers tsked. “Instead of being at school with her lessons and homework, the poor girl has ended up in the street, and now her poor father’s reputation is going to suffer as well.”
Then he turned to a wretched-looking fishmonger who had set up his stall by the pavement and was eating a piece of lavash bread. “Uncle, you’re always here, aren’t you? Don’t you know this girl’s father?”
The man, one cheek bulging with bread, laughed. “Well, a thousand people pass through here every day. How should I know them all? If I started asking every one of them for their name, address and family history, they’d say, ‘What business is it of yours, you nosy devil?’ and I’d lose my customers!”
“For heaven’s sake,” a stout woman in a faded headscarf among the onlookers almost shouted. “The girl is twisting in agony and you lot…” She glanced at the two labourers, then walked away without finishing her sentence.
A newly arrived onlooker with a mobile phone in his hand asked a motorcycle courier, “What happened?”
“To be honest, I’m not from this neighbourhood. I’m just passing through.”
“Nothing,” said the fishmonger. “A bicycle hit her and she fell into the ditch. She was on her way back from school!” He slit open a fish’s belly with a large knife for a customer and continued. “Don’t their schools have headmasters?! Why didn’t she go home by school bus? This…”
He broke off and said to the customer: “Cleaning it is extra, mind you!”
The customer nodded, and the fishmonger shouted, “Fresh fish! Bandar-style shorideh!”
“Doesn’t she have any family?” asked the woman with the basket, addressing no one in particular.
A burly man who looked like a porter, with a green scarf round his neck, replied: “If she had family, would she be walking to school alone?”
A small boy arrived kicking a football, his hand in his pocket. “It was crowded uptown. Didn’t you call an ambulance? All their ambulances are on call!”
A well-dressed lady inquired: “Why was it crowded?”
“Nothing special. People with full bellies kicking up a fuss,” said the burly porter-like man with the green scarf.
Tears trickled down the girl’s bloodstained cheeks. She was in agony. Her face was almost hidden beneath a layer of sludge. A large flower-shaped hair clip dangled from her hair. There were bruises on the backs of her hands. Her body shook violently.
A group of her classmates were approaching from a distance. She was no longer moaning. Her face had grown calm and unbeseeching — the face of a happy girl. She gazed at the people around her with wide, tearless eyes.