As I'd run forward and started the attempt to save the man I'd had a fantasy that the crowd would part and listen to my voice.

Stones would fall from the limp hands of mortified men. The mob, swayed by my eloquent courage, would wander away from the scene with shamed and downcast eyes. Even now, in my recollections of that moment and that danger, I sometimes surrender to a wish that my voice and my eyes had changed their hearts that day, and that the circle of hate, humiliated and disgraced, had widened and dispersed. Instead, the crowd hesitated for only an instant and then pressed in upon us again in a brawling, hissing, screaming, boiling rage, and we were forced to fight for our lives.

Ironically, the very numbers of the crowd attacking us worked to our advantage. We were trapped in an awkward L-shape made by the tangle of vehicles. The crowd surrounded us, and there was no escape. But the crush of their numbers inhibited their movements.

Fewer blows struck us than might've been the case had fewer men opposed us, and the thrashing crowd actually struck at themselves quite often in their fury.

And perhaps there really was some softening of their fury, some reluctance to _kill us, despite their urgent desire to cause us pain. I know that reluctance. I've seen it many times, in many violent worlds. I can't fully explain it. It's as if there's a collective conscience within the group-mind of a mob, and the right appeal, at exactly the right moment, can turn murderous hate aside from its intended victim. It's as if the mob, in just that critical moment, want to be stopped, want to be prevented from the worst of their own violence. And in that one doubting moment, a single voice or fist raised against the gathering evil can be enough to avert it. I've seen it in prison, where men bent on the pack-rape of another prisoner can be stopped by one voice that stirs their shame. I've seen it in war, where one strong voice can weaken and wither the hate-filled cruelty that torments a captured prisoner. And perhaps I saw it on that day, as the Nigerian and I struggled with the mob. Perhaps the strangeness of the situation-a white man, a gora, pleading in Hindi for the lives of two black men- held them back from murder.

The car behind us suddenly roared to life. The heavy-set driver had managed to start the car. He gunned the engine, and began to gently reverse away from the wreckage. The passenger and I slowly shuffled and slithered along beside the car as it backed up into the crowd. We struck out, shoving men away from us and wrenching their hands from our clothes. When the driver reached backward over his seat and opened the rear passenger door, we both jumped into the car. The press of the crowd slammed the door. Twenty, fifty hands drummed, beat, slapped, and pounded on the outside of the car. The driver pulled away, heading at a crawl along the Causeway Road. A collection of missiles-tea glasses, food containers, dozens of shoes-rained on the car. Then we were free, speeding along the busy road and watching through the rear window to make sure we weren't followed.

"Hassaan Obikwa," the passenger beside me said, offering his hand.

"Lin Ford," I replied, shaking his hand and noticing for the first time how much gold he wore. There were rings on every finger. Some of them closed around blue-white, glittering diamonds. There was also a diamond-encrusted gold Rolex hanging loosely at his wrist.

"This is Raheem," he said, nodding to the driver. The huge man in the front seat glanced over his shoulder to offer me a broad grin. He rolled his eyes in a survivor's happy prayer, and turned to face the road.

"I owe you my life," Hassaan Obikwa said with a grim smile. "We both do. They wanted to kill us, back there, that's for sure."

"We were lucky," I answered, looking into his round, healthy, handsome face and beginning to like him.

His eyes and his lips defined his face. The eyes were unusually wide-set and large, giving him a slightly reptilian stare, and the marvellous lips were so full and sumptuously shaped that they seemed to be designed for a much larger head. His teeth were white and even at the front, but all the teeth on either side were capped with gold. Rococo curves at the corners of his wide nose gave his nostrils a delicate flare, as if he was constantly inhaling a pleasantly intoxicating scent. A wide, gold earring, conspicuous beneath his short black hair and against the blue black skin of his thick neck, pierced his left ear.

I glanced at his torn, bloody shirt, and at the cuts and bruises that were swelling on his face and every exposed centimetre of flesh. When I met his eyes again they were glittering with excited good humour. He wasn't too shaken by the violence of the mob, and neither was I. We were both men who'd seen worse, and had been through worse, and we recognised that in each other immediately. In fact, neither of us ever mentioned the incident directly after that day of our meeting. I looked into his glittering eyes, and I felt my smile stretching to match his.

"We were damn lucky!"

"Fuck yes! Yes, we were!" he agreed, laughing hard and slipping the Rolex watch from his wrist. He held it to his ear to make sure it was still ticking. Satisfied, he snapped the watch back on his wrist, and gave his full attention to me. "But the debt is there, and the debt is still important, even if we were very lucky. A debt like this-it is the most important of all a man's obligations. You must allow me to repay you."

"It'll take money," I said. The driver glanced in the rear-vision mirror and exchanged a look with Hassaan.

"But... this debt cannot be repaid with money," Hassaan answered.

"I'm talking about the cart-puller-the one you hit with your car. And the taxi you damaged. If you give me some money, I'll see that it gets to them. It'll go a long way to calming things down at Regal Circle. That's in my beat-I have to work there, every day, and people are going to be pissed off for a while yet.

Do that, and we'll call it square."

Hassaan laughed, and slapped his hand on my knee. It was a good laugh-honest but wicked, and generous but shrewd.

"Please don't worry," he said, still smiling broadly. "This is not my area, it is true, but I am not without influence, even here. I will make sure that the injured man receives all the money he needs."

"And the other one," I added.

"The other one?"

"Yes, the other one."

"The other... what?" he asked, perplexed.

"The taxi driver."

"Yes, yes, the taxi driver also." There was a little silence, humming with puzzles and questions. I glanced out the window of the cab, but I could still feel his enquiring eyes on me. I turned to face him again.

"I... like... taxi drivers," I said.

"Yes..."

"I... I know a lot of taxi drivers."

"Yes..."

"And that cab being smashed up-it'll cause a lot of grief for the driver and his family."

"Of course."

"So, when will you do it?" I asked.

"Do what?"

"When will you put the money up, for the cart-puller and the cab driver?"

"Oh," Hassaan Obikwa grinned, looking up again into the rear vision mirror to exchange a look with Raheem. The big man shrugged, and grinned back into the mirror. "Tomorrow. Is tomorrow okay?"

"Yeah," I frowned, not sure what all the grinning was about. "I just want to know, so that I can talk to them about it. It's not a question of the money. I can put the money up myself. I was planning to do it anyway. I've gotta mend some fences back there.

Some of them are... acquaintances of mine. So... that's why it's important. If you're not going to do it, I need to know, so that I can take care of it myself. That's all."

The whole thing seemed to be getting very complicated. I wished I'd never raised the matter with him. I began to feel angry at him, without really understanding why. Then he offered me his open palm in a handshake.