Smash and Grab

It’s amazing how life can deal you extreme highs followed by dramatic lows, all in the space of an hour.

I had finished my last Darija class and was elated at having persevered despite my struggles, and made it to the end. Driving home at dusk, looking forward to the weekend ahead with another dinner party with friends planned for the following evening, I had the radio turned up and was singing along to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstitious’.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a man stepped out into the road in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes, but did not have enough time to avoid hitting him. It’s hard to describe what that moment felt like but things slowed right down and then got very fast again. Shock, horror and disbelief quickly followed by panic were the sensations that washed over me in those few seconds. I punched on the hazard lights and jumped out of the car. The man was lying in the road with his leg at a strange angle and was groaning in pain. Thankfully I couldn’t see any blood and he didn’t appear to have hit his head.

I started babbling apologies at him in French, which he evidently didn’t speak, but thankfully a woman passing by stepped in to translate as he only spoke Darija and the little I had learnt definitely didn’t prepare you for this type of situation.

Not knowing how to call the police or an ambulance or really knowing what to do in a foreign country where up until now I’d been relying on Vincent to translate difficult conversations, I got someone to help me lift the man into the back of my car. He didn’t seem to be able to put any weight on his leg and I feared it was broken. With vague directions from the woman who had helped me I set off to try and find the hospital.

Between the man groaning in pain and being unable to give me directions in a language we both spoke and me being in total shock and panic, we only got a few hundred metres down the road. He had me pull over and motioned to use my mobile phone, which he then used – I suppose – to call a friend or family member to tell them what had happened.

After that we set off again, with him directing me to turn around and head back the way we’d just come. Frustrated at being unable to understand anything he said to me, panicked and at a loss to what to do I just kept driving.

One word that I did eventually understand was ‘floos…argent’ the Darija and French words for money. He was asking me for cash instead of taking him to the hospital. Feeling responsible for having hurt him and wanting to make things right in the proper way, I refused and repeated “SSbeetar, T’Beeb!” (hospital, doctor). Things where going nowhere so when he again asked me to pull over I did, and tried to call a friend who speaks Darija to help me translate what the man was saying and/or help me find the hospital. When he didn’t answer, the man asked to use my phone again. I handed it over and he went to make a call.

Suddenly, the back door had opened and the man was sprinting – on his supposedly broken leg – off into a field, clutching my phone! Completely gobsmacked I only managed to jump out of the car and utter a feeble “Hey!” before he had disappeared into the night.

Stunned, I got back into the car and drove off down the road looking for a place to turn around. When I eventually got back to the road he’d run down I saw that a mound of earth blocked the way and it was impassable by car. He had deliberately got me to drive to a spot where he could easily escape on foot and I’d be unable to follow, should I have been foolish enough to bother.

Driving home again in a daze I tried to process what had just happened. It was incredible. Of all the eventualities that pass through your mind when you accidentally run someone down with your car, them making a miraculous recovery and stealing your mobile phone is definitely not one of them!

I parked the car and examined the front bumper where I’d hit him – there were no marks or dents. I replayed the accident in my mind and realised that I must not have hit him very hard at all – he hadn’t rolled up onto the bonnet, he hadn’t hit his head when he fell and I had braked quickly enough to almost stop before the impact. However in my shock and panic I had assumed he was genuinely hurt and his groans of pain were real.

Walking the rest of the way to our house I felt faint and nauseous. The horror of actually hitting someone with my car still far outweighed the loss of my phone. I didn’t care about the phone at all, I was just relieved the man was ok and all I kept thinking about was how much worse it could have been for him.

Although after getting home and discussing it with family and friends they made me realise how much worse it could have been for me too. Not thinking clearly I had put a strange man into my car while alone, panicked and confused. Everyone else was just relieved that all he did was steal my phone. Some friends even went so far as to say the whole accident had been a set-up, but after going over it again in my mind I am convinced it was just a case of opportunism.

However, considering all the possible outcomes, including the potential injuries he could have sustained and the hospital bills we could have faced, personally I was just glad that all I’d lost was a mobile phone. What I’d gained was immeasurably more valuable – a wake up call as to the type of place I was now living in and a lesson about how much more street smart I was going to have to be in the future.