MANAMA, Bahrain — It is likely that Zahra Saleh Mohammed, 27, and Ali Yousif Al Satrawi, 16, probably never met during their lives in Bahrain. They only met in that wider inhospitable universe of people harmed abruptly and unnaturally on the same day because of the same protest and both being in wrong places at the wrong time.

Now one of them is dead and the other teetering on the brink.

Zahra was getting off a bus Saturday in Diah, a village outside the Bahraini capital of Manama, when she was attacked with an iron bar wielded by protestors. The iron rebar — the material used to fortify walls in new construction — violently smashed deep into her head, and she was rushed to a hospital where she remains in serious condition.

Why was Zahra there? She got off the bus at that the location, not her normal stop, because a demonstration closed major sections of roadways. She was not part of any action, not protesting, merely trying to get home.

Wrong place, wrong time.

Ali was killed earlier Saturday after being hit by a police car. He was participating in a protest in Juffair, a suburb of Manama, which is home to many Americans and the U.S. naval facility.

For the entire story please go to: http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2011/11/21/intersections-of-fate-in-bahrain/