After about half an hour, Gia and I arrived at a landing which presented us with two equally unattractive passageways, both narrower and darker than the one we had just descended. But backtracking up all those stairs was not an option, not in Gia’s state and not with my general lack of fitness. Somehow we both intuited that the left passageway was the marginally more appealing one and started down it. I could tell Gia was on edge; for her, crowds equated with safety, anonymity in numbers, and we hadn’t seen more than two people walk by together since we turned off the main road. As we rounded a corner, we heard a screeching echo up the passage and passed a spark-littered courtyard where three men were shearing apart scrap metal. I turned and noticed Gia talking with two men; still disoriented by the noise, it took me a moment to realize they were accosting her and that she was shouting at them, which I could only tell by her body language, as her voice was drowned out by the screaming metal. I tried to wade in, shouting, “What’s wrong?” but I couldn’t even hear my own voice; in fact, I felt completely invisible as I watched one of the men, in one lightning-fast move, grab the white bandages on Gia’s head with such force it snapped her neck forward, slamming her chin against her chest; and then, as if ripping meat from a carcass, he pulled once, twice, three times until the bandages tore away from where they had been taped and fastened in place.