Zendegi

A young man behind Martin began objecting loudly, shouting that he hadn’t come onto the streets just to surrender, but nobody else spoke up in his support, and his friends did their best to calm him down. It looked like most people felt they’d achieved a reasonable trade-off: having shown their numbers outside the Majlis and marched in defiance of the President’s orders, they had not been cowed, but nor would they be reckless.

As the protest broke up, Behrouz said, ‘I want to find a pay phone and see if I can call my wife.’

‘Okay.’ Martin could imagine how she’d be feeling, with fresh denouncements of the protesters all over the TV and the mobile network disabled. He remembered when the army had opened fire on a demonstration in Peshawar and he’d left Liz wondering for hours if he was dead or alive. He said, ‘I’ll meet you at the car in an hour.’ They were parked about three kilometres away, and Martin wanted to hang around a little longer and try to get that photo and some more background information from Mahnoosh.

Behrouz headed off. Martin looked around; Mahnoosh was nowhere in sight. He stood at the corner for a while, scanning the street, swearing under his breath. He’d lost her.

He decided to head south towards Sa’di Station; if he couldn’t show his readers a train packed with Basijis, he might yet get a snap of them emerging from the Metro en masse. As he walked past shops and teahouses he could still see people around him that he recognised from the march; most had heeded the suggestion to break up into small groups, but there were also visible packs of young men – some of them dressed in heavy metal T-shirts, the uniform most despised by the regime – walking together, talking and laughing. It was easy to sympathise; there was something undignified about being asked to disown your comrades and slink away into the crowd.

Martin heard angry shouting from further down the street; he couldn’t make out the words, but he had no doubt what was happening. A group of women with shopping bags walking ahead of him turned around and hurried away; at the same time he could see people running to join the fray. Part of him wanted to slip into the safety of a shop or an alleyway – nobody would know, nobody would reproach him – but he forced himself to keep walking. It suddenly struck him that he’d been far less timid in Pakistan, when it should have been the other way around: back then, he should have been thinking about Liz. But back then, whatever insanity he’d been swept up in, he’d always pictured himself telling her about it. Just having her to share his stories with had made him feel bulletproof; if nothing was quite real until he’d recounted it to her, how could the world ever intervene and break that narrative thread?

The source of the shouting came into sight: on the opposite side of the street, five Basijis were fighting with three young men, relentlessly swinging batons into flesh. One Basiji was brandishing an automatic pistol, ranting about traitors and pointing the weapon at anyone who came near, keeping a larger group of angry civilians at bay.

One of the youths in the centre of the mêlée was swaying drunkenly, bleeding from a head wound, clearly in bad shape. Martin checked his phone, but there was still no signal. He looked around; a shopkeeper was standing in a doorway watching nervously. Martin mimed holding a handset and asked ‘Ambulance?’

‘Kardam,’ the man replied tersely: he’d already called. The landlines must be working.

Martin turned back to the fight and took some pictures. As he pocketed his phone he saw another, larger group of Basijis in the distance, coming north from Sa’di Station along his own side of the street. He was about to turn and begin his retreat when something else caught his eye: a green sash draped across the shoulder of a brown manteau. Mahnoosh was about fifteen metres from him, walking south.

Martin was baffled; he hadn’t taken her for a martyr, deliberately putting herself in harm’s way. Then he understood: she hadn’t chosen to keep the sash on as a mark of defiance; she’d simply forgotten she was wearing it. She’d done her best to shepherd her section of the march to safety, then she’d walked away, alone, imagining that she’d become invisible, no more a target than any other woman in hejab.

Martin started walking towards her, trying to judge his pace so he’d reach her in time without drawing attention to either of them. The second group of Basijis were shouting slogans at the people they passed, but they were yet to start bashing anyone; Martin doused a shameful hope that they’d find some guy in a Rammstein T-shirt to keep them occupied.

Some of the people ahead of him were turning back, but Mahnoosh continued, undeterred. Why had she headed south at all, when she’d known what was coming? Maybe she’d wanted to see how things unfolded here – to bear witness to any violence, even if there was nothing more she could do to prevent it.