Somewhere! (Hunaak!) (17 page)

“
I will stay with you until the last moment!” — I said.

Her sobbing only became
louder…

“
We are already in the last moment Husam!” — she added.

Her statement shocked me. I knew this was my last chance to get back to my world or to stay here with Malak forever.

“Malak… there must be a way for us to be together!” — I said.

“
Husam, if you do not go now you will never be able to get back!” — she added.

Malak that had risked her life more than once to save me.
Here she was handing me this time to die just as she had risked her life for but a few moments that she had lived near me!

I pulled out the pen, the pen that I used to start my story and I began writing my last words, not on paper, but on my heart. Malak held my hand in her hands as we held the pen together. She pushed it through the ribs of my broken chest until I felt its tip on my heart
’s wall

“
Husam… I love you Husam!” — Malak said.

The pen
’s tip had disappeared inside my heart when she said “I love you”, I felt it deep in my heart, asking it to stop here, to restart in my other world. Malak held me in her arms, I felt her heart beating faster as mine slowed down, she sobbed silently.

As I took my final breath, I saw Mr. Khaled watching me from afar holding his wife
’s shoulders as they were both crying. His wife’s tears were begging me to take care of Maram. This was the last moment before worlds would separate me from Malak.

“
I love you Malak!” — I said.

“
I will wait for you Husam! do not be too late… please!”  — she added.

(11)

I will return to
Somewhere!

A
pen…

A plastic pen this time.

I took it from Maram when she visited me in the hospital this morning before she went to her college. It took me more than a hour of struggle to write two sentences. My hand was shaking and I  barely had the strength to press it down onto the paper. Yet, here I was writing my first words…

I am back
…

Back from Somewhere!

And I remembered… everything!

I can now tell you my story. I remembered it with all its details.

My story started the moment I moved from here to Somewhere. Friday the sixth of June of the year two thousand and fourteen.

I had promised my mother that I would drive her to a wedding. I was late, as usual, and she got upset as usual. I drove off with her as fast as I could to make up for my delay, a situation that had repeated itself many times. Every time I would be racing against time and passing rows of cars right and left and reassure my mother —every time she would yell at me— that her son was a pro.

One time, in one of those
passings, a family car blocked my way moving into the left lane at the legal speed —or maybe a bit faster
—
but legal speed was not enough for pros such as myself! I started off by annoying him with the high beams and then coming too close to his car so that he would make room for me with no success. There was no way I could pass him from the left shoulder because there was roadwork, so I had to pass him from the right side. I turned —without notice
—
to the right lane to pass between this stubborn driver and a column of trucks. Even though it was a tight fit, I increased my speed to pass him and I was cut off but a second daredevil who had decided to pass the trucks from the right lane, forcing the truck ahead of me to swirl to the left and hit its breaks to avoid slamming into that idiot who had squeezed himself into the lane after he had passed it and forced it to stop… and forced us to slam into the truck!

All of these details only happened in less than ten seconds, I remember every detail of it like a scene in slow motion! That space that would barely allow my car to pass like an arrow between the trucks and the family car had been reduced to half, the truck
’s breaks locking up ahead of me and smoke coming from its wheels. My mother screaming “Dear God!” and then the trucks
’
rear end took her away from the right side of my car… along with parts of my body!

God bless your soul mother! I killed you! Damn audacity! Every daredevil that shows off his adventures that he had avoided easily, does not know that there is always an adventure that he will
not be able to show off to anyone. This adventure always comes without warning: he would think it was but a passing moment, then he would send a message recklessly from his phone as he drove the car with three fingers and half an eye —and one tenth of his concentration
—
one of his regular passings and maneuvers between cars, one of the times he raced everyone to shave five minutes on his way to the café where he wastes half of his life. One of those times could be one of his last or it might be it.

And with the final moments of my life
… my story just started. The accident smashed the right side of my skull along with a few of my ribs and every bone of my right hand. The metal ripped through my stomach and parts of my intestines… None of those who had gathered around me thought
this corpse
would return to life someday.

The ambulance paramedics struggled to make it through the crowds who were so occupied with taking pictures of my car that was stuck on the truck
—and of my body
—
they almost covered me in newspapers had it not been for that weak heartbeat that gave me away. But it stopped while I was in the ambulance. My heartbeat stopped. Blood had stopped flowing in my veins and my brain started its countdown when the oxygen stopped flowing.

Seven minutes is the amount of time that brain cells can last without oxygen before they
get damaged. This was a full seven minutes in hopeless attempts to revive my heart which ended with an electric shock. I have already told you everything that had happened to me in those seven minutes, from the moment my soul’s connection to this body weakened and I was then in another world
…
Somewhere;
to the last moment when my heart got shocked and started beating again, bringing me back from the arms of Malak, and throwing me here once more.

Who was Malak? Was she my nymph?
Or just a mirage that my subconscious had used? Did she know that I was having my last breaths in the accident, so she prepared that world for me? Did she design it and prepare it just to welcome me and prepare me psychologically to accept the reality of death? It truly was a world between life and death and granting every wish I had had in my life and making me live it with all its details. Malak could not tell me the truth to shield me from the trauma that might have ended my last hopes of coming back to my life, a soul would not get back to the body when hope was gone. She still wished that I would stay by her side forever. My soul would not have hesitated for an instant to stay there had it not been my worry for my family, for my sister, and mother whom I did not know had already gone there and had met my father… Mr. Khaled!

Khaled Madani!

I swear I felt that it was him and that the lady next to him was my mother, all that fondness does not change, no matter how the bodies that surrounded it do! Malak fought to keep me next to her after she had waited for me all those years, but my father and mother were torn with sadness and fear for Maram.

Everyone knew that
that chances of me surviving that accident were negligible, and that even if I did survive I would do so with a number of disabilities that would make me completely dependent on my sister's support. Yet, my Father held onto that impossible hope, especially after Mother had joined him.

I did not receive the news of my mother
’s death with the sadness that should come with such disaster, because I was with her not long before! My experience had removed the barriers between life and death.

We fear death because we had never lived it before; we fear it just as we fear every other unknown.

We get sad from parting with the dead, but I was now in their company; I saw them in bless that makes me happy for them and saddened for those who had yet not joined them. If our sadness was for their death, our lives are death in comparison to their lives. If sadness was for their parting, there are those who we do not see while they are still amongst us. They leave our lives without losing their’s! Death is not a farewell… but farewell is death!

I regained control over my fingers and gradually, my mentality. It took hours to write my first few lines, I did not stop until I wrote everything that had happened to me
Somewhere
with every detail.

I felt a strange energy flow throughout my body. I slept in this bed for three months and half of this
time in what the doctors called, a vegetable state. A state with no hope of cure other than faith in God’s powers and miracles. Doctors who had seen my brain’s MRI today could not believe that this was the same brain that had more than twenty five percent damage just a few short months before. This was a real miracle as damaged brain cells do not regenerate. My brain worked now with high efficiency and accelerating recovery!

Two days ago, I opened my eyes and saw what was around me for the first time. Yesterday, I was able to eat my first meal after glucose had been my only nutrition. Today, I said my first words and here I was now trying to get up and revive my muscles.

I pulled my leg that had forgotten how to walk and I threw it to the ground. I gathered the strength of every muscle in my body to get up; I faltered in my first steps and then I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Who was this? Did I know him? Not only had I lost my good looks and the tone of my body muscles that I had. I had also lost half my weight and part of my face. Luckily I did not lose my right eye.

They had performed several plastic surgeries
and  began patching up my skull and my face, making it look like a mutant’s mask. Foul patched skin now covered the right side of my face and head. My eyebrows were gone along with parts of my hair. Not only my head, but my chest, stomach and parts of my hand were all covered with patches of wrinkled skin that remained from the scars of the accident and operations.

A nurse entered and was totally terrified when she found me standing.

“Mr. Husam! What are you doing? You are  not supposed to leave your bed!” — the nurse said.

At the time, I only cared about leaving the hospital.

“I am feeling much better, I think I am ready to leave the hospital!” — I said.

She held me from my arm and helped me return to my bed.

“You can't leave Mr. Husam, your health conditions aren't stable yet, the consultants still need to analyze your situation.” — the nurse added.

“
Well
…
I've just survived a fatal accident. Going home won’t kill me for sure!” — I added.

I just realized that I was speaking to her in a smooth American accent which was in no way related to the Saudi-English that I would have mumbled before my accident, this was the accent that I used
…
Somewhere
!

The nurse measured my temperature and blood pressure routinely. She handed over to me my pills along with fever and pressure reduction medicines. My temperature was 39 degrees and my blood pressure was above 100/150. My heartbeats were more than 90 bps, all highly elevated. Maram arrived at that moment and saw me sitting on the bed so she dropped the bags she had in her hands and bolted towards me to hug me.

“Husam!! Oh my God! I do not believe my eyes! The doctors said there was no way you could leave the bed, save for a miracle! Thank God! Thank God!” — Maram said.

I watched her, this baby girl whom I had
left all that bless for and came back to protect her from this world and its monsters.

“
Look what I got you, it’s the Albaik spicy chicken that you love! I also got you some clothes instead of the this hospital robe! Come let me help you get dressed in something nice! But first close your eyes, I have a surprise!” — Maram added.

I closed my eyes to please her and felt her fingers fixing my hair on the left side. I think she is trying to hide my injury and deformed eyebrow. She then put a hat on my head.

“So, what do you think? It is an original cap that I got from the origianl Itihad shop not those knockoffs you would find at Alshati center!” — she said.
 

I could not hold back my tears as I watched her empty the rest of the clothes from the bags. My heart was in pain as I looked her in the eyes.

“Maram… Mam and dad say hi.” — I said.

She froze and raised her face in complete shock towards me and her tears came down slowly.

“Husam!! Don’t say that!! You are well! You have been through tough times and your brain was impacted by the accident, but you are in good health now and are improving in a way that surprised all the doctors.” — Maram added.

“
Maram… I am serious! I have seen them, and sat with them and talked to them… just as I am talking to you now. Dad says that he misses you a lot and that you must be all grown up by now.” — I said.

She collapsed. I could barely make out her words from her gasps.

“Husam… I also cheated death exactly like you. On the day of the accident, I went crazy calling you and you did not answer, then someone answered and told me to inform the family of the owner of this phone that he was in an accident on the highway. I went out barefooted like a crazy woman looking for a taxi at midnight, I got to the accident location and only found the car and blood and people were saying may God have mercy on their souls!” — Maram said.

She
kept quiet for a moment… allowing me to join her in tears then went on.

“
I do not know how I made it to King Fahad Hospital when they told me you were there… I kept running and calling out for you in the ER… I saw her, Husam, covered on a stretcher. Her abaya was visible from under the blanket and blood was dripping. I also saw you while they were running with you from room to room, no one was telling me anything.

For three months Husam
—with no hope but in Allah
—
not a single doctor comforted me. First they said that your chances of survival were slim, then they said that your brain was damaged and that you would stay in a coma for the rest of your life.  Then they said that even if you did wake up, you’d be crippled and here you are now sitting with good health. You are now passing on Mum and Dad’s regards. No matter how much I praise Allah, it will not be enough!”

I took her head in my arms to empty what remained of her tears, my poor child had suffered much more than I ever did.  The pain of the body is much more bearable than the heart
’s ever is!