A risky encounter

Sometimes I feel like I was a grandma telling old tales to her grandchildren over and over again. But there are real stories that happened to me and left a deep track in my life.

As a reporter, I had to cover the arrest of some known members of a political party who openly supported a terrorist group and were in the parliament. While the police were doing their job, in the streets, there were violent demonstrations against the arrests.

A group of youngsters with their faces covered by bandanas and backpacks loaded with Molotov cocktails and bottles full of acid was taking positions and moving in circles in an area of narrow streets to attack the police officers and the journalists.

I was observing what was happening in the street, and suddenly I found myself alone with a young man in front of me holding a bottle of acid in his right hand, ready to throw it to my face. I had no place to hide. He was yelling: I’ll kill you!

From a balcony, two lawyers of the people who were being arrested began to yell:

-Hit her! Hit her! she is a manipulative whore!

I felt that the guy was not so sure of what he was doing, and I stood still because I thought that if I began to move, I could prompt him to throw the bottle.

The lawyers were still yelling encouraging him to wound me.

Suddenly, a man came from behind me and put himself between the guy with the bottle and me. It was Xavier, a photographer from my newspaper.

He told me:
-Come with me, because we have heard these people talking about that today they are going against you.

Very slowly, we walked backward, until the guy with the bottle disappeared. We reached the car of Xavier, my friend, and we leave that place. He saved me that day.

It was a risky encounter. But It finished without any harm.

In the featured picture, I, as a young reporter, doing a much more pacific job in the parliament.

FOWC: Encounter