The road over the Sherani pass climbs in switchbacks above a dry streambed. The seven o'clock bus carries the men toward the mines: day laborers, two masons, a seed seller, three boys going to be hired for the first time. Noor is nineteen and works as a cleaner. He gets on last, hanging from the open door, the rag in his back pocket, the plastic can of radiator water tied with string behind the driver's seat.

At kilometre fourteen the driver reaches for the gear and does not find it. Noor understands from the sound, not from the words. Then there is emptiness under the wheels and the sheet metal becomes a drum, and Noor is out, thrown from the door he was holding open, and he rolls on the hot gravel while the bus goes down into the ravine and comes to rest on its side, at the bottom, against the stones.

Noor stands up. One arm does not answer well. He goes down. At the bottom of the ravine the bus lies like a large animal. Dust comes out of the cracks, then nothing comes out anymore. It is early, the sun is still low. There is no one. Only him and the dry stream and the water can, rolled away, come to rest against a bush.

Noor begins to pull the men out through the broken windows. He pulls out four who are breathing and seven who are not breathing. The four who are breathing he lays in the shade of the wreck. The seven he lays in a row on the gravel, faces up. The others he cannot move, they are under the sheet metal, and the sheet metal is too much.

Then he stops. He looks at the faces of the seven. They have the dust of the ravine on them, grey, going into the nostrils and the open mouth. One is the seed seller, who every morning gave him a handful of roasted chickpeas. One is one of the boys who were going to be hired: he still has the good shirt, the one a man wears when he goes to ask for work.

Noor goes to fetch the can. Inside is the radiator water, the water for the trip back, three litres, maybe four. It is engine water, not for drinking. Noor knows this. He wets the rag and begins to clean the face of the seed seller. He takes the dust from the nostrils, from the mouth, from the closed eyes. The face becomes a face again. He moves to the boy with the good shirt. Then to the third.

From up on the road comes the noise of engines. They are the Levies jeeps and a pick-up from the bus company. Six men come down into the ravine on foot. The oldest man of the company holds a notebook. He counts. He says a number to the police. He says thirty-four. In the notebook there are thirty-four tickets.

Noor knows they are not thirty-four. He is the one who let them on. The ones standing in the aisle, the day laborers who pay by hand and take no ticket, those are not in the notebook. But that is not what Noor is looking at. Noor is looking at the can. There is water left for two faces, maybe three.

The company man tells him to leave it, that the ambulance is coming from Zhob, that they will load the bodies. He tells him to go and sit in the shade, that he is hurt. The police photograph the wreck with their phones.

Noor wets the rag again. He moves to the fourth face. It is a man he does not know, short beard, a gold tooth. He takes the dust from his nostrils. The company man says it again, louder, that he must stop, that he is getting in the way. Noor does not answer. He moves to the fifth face.

The water in the can is almost gone. There is enough for one face. There are still three faces in the row with the dust on them, and then there are the ones under the sheet metal that no one has counted yet. Noor knows the water is not enough. He knew it before, from the moment he started. He wets the rag with the last water and cleans the sixth face, a young man. Then the can is empty. He turns it over and nothing comes out anymore.

He sits down on the gravel beside the row. The company man writes something in the notebook. The police load the first body onto an iron stretcher. The sun is high now and the gravel burns. Noor holds the empty can between his knees. He looks at the seventh face, the one he did not have time to clean, with the dust still in the nostrils, and he does not get up to look for more water, because there is no more water. He stays sitting and looks at it, the dirty face among the clean faces, until they come to load it too.