It was then that the sounds of metal stopped, replaced by Gia’s screams and the noise of the three men from the courtyard shouting, I couldn’t tell at whom, and I could see them advancing towards us out of the corner of my eye when I realized my hands were gripping the arm of the man who now held the tatters of Gia’s bandages, brown from dried blood but also glistening with fresh blood. I looked at Gia’s face and noticed she was bleeding from one of the loosened stitches near her temple, blood enveloping her left ear, Van Gogh–like. The man gave his arm a shake with such force my wrists felt like they had snapped, and then he pushed me back into the stone wall as if brushing away a barking Pomeranian. My back hit the wall first and then my head, cracking against the stones a fraction of a second after. The three men from the courtyard were around us now, shouting at the man holding Gia’s bandages, who kept indicating her face, fingers forward, palm outstretched as if arguing his point and giving evidence. In my mind Gia, in this moment, had the face of the mummy with the screaming mouth and eye sockets and the wasp’s-nest breasts, but I couldn’t look at her so instead I looked at the face of the second man, the friend of the man holding the bandages, looked at his passivity and bemusement while these three metalworkers reasoned with his friend to let us be, just let them be.

The next thing I knew, Gia and I were half a block away, walking swiftly, but before I could say anything to her I heard the voice of an old woman calling out from behind us. We walked without turning, but she continued to call, and when we finally looked back she was ambling towards us. The street behind her was empty now, which struck me as strange. Where had the men gone? As the old woman reached us, the sounds of metalworking resumed, filling the narrow passage with its shrieks, such that the woman didn’t bother saying anything as she took off her headscarf and tied it around Gia’s head. Gia had to crouch down somewhat to enable this, and a smile and a raised hand was all that was needed to communicate our thanks.