She shook her head. She didn’t like it. She always kept an escape route in view when she covered protests, a quick way out if danger suddenly flared. Until this point, there had been successive alleyways and side roads leading off the road. They served as natural valves if pressure built up. Now, though, the wall running alongside the road was solid and the police lines were closing in. They were being funnelled. It was time to get out.
She put her notebook away and shouldered her backpack, then launched herself back into the crowd, trying to force her way, elbows digging, across the forward flow. Men turned towards her, their brown eyes stretched wide with curiosity and amusement. She was engulfed in the smell of raw sweat. The men looked rough and uneducated. Probably bussed into Islamabad just for the demonstration.
Someone whispered something in her ear. At the same time, a sweaty hand touched her arm, slid over her buttock. She twisted and at once the hand slid away. She glared into a rack of blank faces, then steadied herself and pushed her way forwards again. The pressure of bodies around her was building and she wanted to get out as fast as possible. She fixed her eyes on a young policeman with a neatly trimmed moustache and concentrated on battling towards him. His dark eyes were strafing the crowd. He had a riot shield in one hand, a raised wooden baton in the other.
Protesters, starting to feel enclosed, pressed ahead with greater urgency and beat their way forwards. They gave off the keen, hungry scent of growing panic. Ellen fought to keep moving, but was repeatedly knocked off balance by the men surrounding her. The communal chanting was ragged now, disintegrating into a cacophony of shouts and cries. Her cotton kameez felt slick against her skin, her back running with sweat under her backpack. Her headscarf slithered to and fro across escaping hair.
An elbow stabbed her in the ribs. She coughed, tried to catch her breath. Her lungs strained. She pulled at her headscarf to anchor it. Must keep moving. A heavy man barged into her, stamping on the side of her foot. She grabbed at his arm to keep herself upright and he shook her off, pushing past. Her legs started to shake. She must get out. All around her, waves of hysteria ran through the crowd. The men’s shouts became rough and wild.
She sensed something moving at the edge of the crowd and turned to look. The riot police were shuffling closer, narrowing the spaces between them until they stood shoulder to shoulder, driving the protesters back against the wall. A high-pitched police whistle sounded and the officers advanced as one, shields high, wooden lathis swinging wildly. More policemen jumped down from the meshed backs of riot vehicles to join in.
The men around her twisted, ducked and skidded as they tried to get away. She was trapped between them, squeezed so hard she could barely breathe. The defiant shouting had gone. Her ears were filled with cries of pain and the crunch of lathis striking bone.
She was swept sideways by a sudden surge. Somewhere the crowd burst out and the men rushed to the right, carrying her along with them. People had crashed through the barricades and were spilling out into the road and its haze of shimmering petrol fumes. Car horns blared. She was knocked against the side of a stationary car, then along the edge of a windowless bus. A row of tired faces stared down blankly from inside.
Ahead of her, a scrawny young man fell and was sucked under in the wash of running, stamping feet. His face rose for a moment, blood trickling from his temple. She reached towards him through the crowd but he was too far away. He sank again and was lost. Beyond, a stout man swung the wooden pole of his placard and cracked it in two across a policeman’s head. Other officers in the line swarmed forwards, jumping on the man, pounding his head and shoulders with lathis and fists until his hair matted with blood.
Bitter smoke made her choke. A tyre was burning in the road, forming a puddle of melted rubber. The police line had collapsed. Everywhere men were throwing fists and kicks through air thick with shouts and splintering wood. She looked around, trying to find a way out. She was hemmed in on all sides. Distant sirens screamed the arrival of more police.
The crowd thickened again after the sudden rush of movement. Shock waves ran back through the crowd causing sudden compression. Ellen found herself trapped between two thick-set men. One fell back on her as he fought for balance. His fist caught her stomach. She couldn’t find the breath to cry out. The muscular man behind tried to claw through, heaving his way past. He grabbed at her shoulder and shoved her backwards. The sky wheeled, a ragged white emptiness far above. Her legs scrambled, were kicked from under her. Stumbling. Her hands clutched uselessly at the slippery cotton moving past her. She was falling, helpless to right herself, pressed down by the surge of bodies on all sides.
‘Ellie!’
She was hallucinating, she must be. Drowning in the noise, the chaos. A fist struck the side of her head and set her ear ringing. On her knees. A forest of legs. She must find the surface, get back on her feet. The men around her were a blur of kicking limbs. She put her hands to her head, shielding her face. A foot caught her hard in the ribs. Under. If she went under, she’d be trampled.
‘Ellie!’
Close. Urgent. A real voice? Her ears were deaf with stinging and shouts and blows. A foot caught her just above her eye, knocked her sideways, backwards into the crush. The legs around her blurred and shimmered.
‘Ellie!’
Louder. Still reeling from the blow, she managed to turn her head. A large clean hand was sticking through the swell at waist height. Reaching for her. She stared at it for a second, too stunned to move. A white hand with strong fingers and neatly clipped nails and long dark hairs above the knuckles. Beside her, a man slipped and his punching battle to stay upright forced a moment’s gap. She crawled on her hands and knees through the feet, the legs, the bodies, thrusting her arm out to grasp the hand. Her fingers locked around its wrist, firm and warm. The hand closed over hers, heaving her out and upwards as she clung to it, dragging her onto her feet, even as the waves of people crashed past her.
Her head was spinning, her eyes closed. She couldn’t speak. A strong arm was holding her upright, wrapped around her back and under her arm. She let her head loll into the curve of his shoulder, fighting dizziness. They were moving sideways together, his shoulder ramming through the crowd, steering them both. She clung to him, struggling to keep herself on her feet. When she tried to open her eyes the colours swam and shimmied, making her nauseous. She let them fall closed again. One eye was sticky, its lids starting to seal. He was dragging her on through screeching traffic and petrol fumes. She was too weak to stop him.
At last he lowered her with a bump onto a low wall. He was crouching over her, his arm still around her shoulders, his breath warm on her cheek. His body ran solid and safe down her side.
‘Ellie?’
She managed to part her glued eyes a crack. She was off the road now, looking back at a chaos of figures, some running, some crouching, dazed, on the central reservation, others curled on the ground, still and bloodied. Fresh police sirens, distant, started to wail. A young police officer was rushed past, carried by colleagues, his legs hanging limp, spilt blood stiffening his moustache.
‘Can you hear me?’
She forced herself to turn her head and looked into his face. It hung, eyes large with concern, in her vision. Him? She blinked, tried to swallow down the nausea, to focus. No. Impossible. She closed her eyes again, breathing thickly. A moment later, she tried again, forcing open her eyelids and peering at him. ‘Frank?’
‘Hey.’ His mouth broke into a smile, showing neat, whitened teeth. Lines fanned into cracks around his eyes. ‘Who’d you expect?’
The office was brightly lit and chill with air conditioning. The cut above her eye was painful. The sheen of sweat on her skin found its way into scratches and made them sting. Frank had half-carried her across a short hallway and now she was sitting in a hard plastic chair, sagging backwards, her head propped against a wall beneath a giant corporate logo which read: FOOD 4 ALL. She closed her eyes.