2023-07-28 09:57:00
A surreal but fortunately harmless mishap happened to Beverly, a 28-year-old Carolo, while she was in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. “I was going to pick up my daughter from the crèche, when I was hit by a car, which took me at the level of the knees. However, I had looked left and right before crossing, and there was no one there. But the car tumbled at full speed from a perpendicular street. My head hit the windshield, I fell on the tarmac and I slid several meters”, she says. “The driver barely stopped and drove off, leaving me there alone. I was very scared, I might only think: “keep your eyes open, stay awake, tell your husband to go get your daughter.” The street, a major thoroughfare in the capital, was packed with people. It took over 10 minutes for someone to stop and ask me if I was okay.
His first instinct, still in shock, was to leave the road. Because the cars kept driving, all around her, as if nothing was happening. “You should know that over there, there are still a lot of people who buy their license, instead of having a driving test. It drives very, very badly, at full speed in the city, we saw reverse gears on the motorway… In fact, in Belgium, we drive very well in comparison”, says Beverly to contextualize. Fortunately, another “expatriate” from the residence where the young woman was staying arrived and helped her. According to this neighbor, people run over by cars are commonplace. Three months earlier, it was another mum – and her stroller – who had been knocked over in the same place…
The drugged driver had a rate five times higher than the legal limit: acquitted thanks to… his change of address!
”My arms were bleeding, a huge ball on my head, and apart from this expatriate everyone was pretending nothing. I was able to notify my husband by telephone to join me.” When said spouse arrives, ten minutes have passed: “There is only one car that has stopped to ask if everything is okay. Nobody called an ambulance, and when we asked for someone to call the police, nobody wanted to.”
The police are finally called. The minutes pass. “And suddenly the driver of the car that hit me came back. He was all smiles, on the phone telling someone something. Everything seemed normal. My husband first asked for an explanation, then he saw red and… went and punched him. Locals started to separate them, they also called the police to say that a man was being attacked by an expatriate. Beverly and her husband went to the hospital, the neighbor of residence having agreed to stay there to wait for the police. The agents took an hour to arrive, and when they disembarked they were looking for “the European who punched someone”.
With the beautiful days, the urban rodeos resume with a vengeance: “The driver got out of his car and slapped me”
€230 in hospital bills later, Beverly tried to press charges once morest the driver. “I went three times to try to file a complaint, no one ever wanted to listen to me. Either I wasn’t in the right place – at the central police station in Baku, eh – or they didn’t have time, or I had to come back with a translator. I ended up giving up, fortunately there was nothing serious, just a few marks on my body that ended up healing and disappearing…”
Beverly was in Baku because she had followed her husband there, a professional footballer, who had signed for two seasons with a club there. And with her two children, she lived between Belgium and Azerbaijan, sometimes staying several months there in a residence. “Until this accident, everything was going very well, the people were charming, we did not feel at all excluded or not welcome. The mentalities are very different from Belgium, but we adapt. On the other hand, as soon as we had a problem with a local, suddenly we were treated like strangers and everyone closed completely. We became very alone. I’m not traumatized by the experience, because I’m doing very, very well. But I still have a little more fear of the road and the cars, we deal with it.”
The facts date back to February 2023. Since then, nothing has changed. The Azerbaijani police seem to have preferred to “forget” her complaint and that once morest her husband, as if nothing had ever happened.
“At 61, I married a 19-year-old Mauritian”: twenty years later, retired René lives on €8.92 a day
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