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- Story Listed as: True Life For Kids
- Theme: Survival / Success
- Subject: Adventure
- Published: 08/06/2012
Long Way From Home
Born 1995, M, from Lahore, PakistanThe Night was dark and the storm even more intense. Standing outside, by now I could almost feel a bit of drizzle over my head. My soft slippery skin was unable to resist the cold and wet drops of rain passing through and giving me little shocks of cold the entire time. The only thought that was taking up in my mind at that very time was, 'Why did I ever listen to my grandfather anyway?'
The two of us had started off on foot in the evening. Just because my mom and dad had to go out of town for a day or two and so I had to be the one accompanying my grandfather to the church in the evening because he couldn’t miss tonight’s convention being held under the roof of an age old cathedral. After all, you cannot leave a seven year old girl alone at home right?
I was never interested to go with grandpa in the first place. Being a girl, and rather an overly active one among my fellows, I would have been more happy if I had been skipping with my friends throughout the night or watching cartoons all day long for that matter.
But I just wasn’t that fortunate. There was no way I could have managed to convince my mom and dad about my betterment and present them a spectrum of opinions with just seven years of experience living in this world. So to cut the whole chase up, there we were finally standing on the doorsteps of a fairly small cathedral compared to those which I had seen previously in the television documentaries. Anyway, the size of the church was not a thing to worry about. What came next was actually the test of my patience. Although my feelings had started to turn bitter right when I was forced to make my way with grandpa today, but they took a flight when we were greeted by a stout old gentleman right on the tall medieval style door of the church.
To my surprise, and my grandfather’s unknowing, only grey heads were allowed inside for the gathering and the proceedings. To make it simple to understand, the old age fellow told us that only the elders of this village are invited tonight. He further inquired from my grandfather about the notice which they had sent at our home and told him that there was a special notice written at the bottom corner informing everyone that children are not allowed. My grandfather rubbed his already half bald head after realizing that he had read that notice but failed to remember when it came down to the decision of whether to take me along or not.
Obviously this made me go mad at him and I just walked away trying not to talk to him although he was trying to apologize for his mistake. Anyhow, he went inside and the door shut back with a loud noise. Pretending that I am going to leave him there and get back home on my own, I had already taken a few steps away from the building. The last voice I heard from my grandpa was informing me to stay outside and wait for a while till he comes out. “It won’t take more than half an hour” he said, but once I turned around to grab his attention, the door had already been closed.
I stood there waiting! Obviously that was the only thing I could do on my own at that time. Boring it certainly was, but there was no way back for me. I was too young and too afraid to make my way back at night, especially when home meant almost an hour of walk down the road. There was no chance I was going back. Even if I did manage to somehow fight the scary monsters getting in my way I certainly would have been unable to fight an even bigger monster living inside my grandfather’s temperament when once he would have got the news of my return to home alone at night.
Well it wasn’t long before it started to rain. Earlier I had heard the meteorologists on television shouting about a storm making its way towards our village tonight and now there it lay right in front of me. The moment I saw rain drops splashing over the road I was really scared. To be honest I had loved rain all my life. It’s such a great feeling when your mom doesn’t mind and allows you to play in the rain. But this rain is surely something else.
The rain I was facing now was a lot more dreadful. Although the rain was like the one which used to fall everywhere else every time, but the only thing that was making me frightened was the fact that there was no mom present nor was anyone else for that matter.
The only thing that showed a slight bit of positivity was the fact that ten minutes out of the desired thirty had passed. In the best case I just had to pass twenty more minutes by any means possible and then my grandfather would come out and save my night for sure. But seriously, do you really think best case scenarios ever do exist in life?
Forty minutes had passed since my grandpa left me out and so that meant I was facing the rain for quite some time. By now the tree under which I was trying to gain shelter had given way. The leaves were all filled with water and didn’t remain much of a shelter any longer. Standing under it or standing without it remained one or the same thing. Actually I believed standing away from it was a better idea because the heavy storm was already making the tree’s branches swing wildly and even though I was a bit too small for this kind of prediction, still even a little toddler like me was able to figure out that the tree was not going to hold on there for much longer.
I changed my place and decided to sneak inside the cathedral through one of the windows which I could see was peaceful and quiet inside. The heavy doors and walls packed with thick windows and a strong shelter overhead was making everyone at ease. I had serious doubts if any one of the people inside even had a slight idea of what was going on outside.
I even tried to bang one or two windows in my reach but that proved useless as well. After all, what can you expect from the strength of a seven year old girl. I never really possessed a battle axe type of personality and realizing that, I even used some rocks to somehow break any of the windows and inform someone what was going on outside, but that was no good as well. After a few desperate attempts I cursed the people behind such a strong building design and left that place.
Since there was no other way to escape the harsh rainstorm pouring mercilessly over me, a cute little angel, eventually I had no other option rather than to stand still right in the middle of the road because that seemed to me the farthest place for a falling tree which might knock this already scared seven year old down.
Desperately trying to search for a familiar face, I looked in all the possible directions, but this search turned out just to make matters worse for me. Every time I looked around myself and tried to focus a bit on the distant trees, a sort of thunder always lighted the whole place up and before I had enough time to blink, all of the clear images would darken up again.
Although the lightening never threatened me much, once it swept away it left darkness again, and I felt shadows around me everywhere and trees creeping closer all the time.
Like any girl of my age, I found myself obviously trembling. With my legs shaking wildly, my fists clenched tightly and half my body almost frozen dead, I felt myself truly in the worst situation I had ever faced. There was no sight of anyone near except for those who were relishing their chit chats inside the church with roaring fireplaces keeping them warm. Facing my fears in such miserable conditions, I sat right there on the middle of the road and started crying.
Every raindrop felt like an icy brick falling straight from the sky right on my back. I heard once when mom was telling me to pray to God whenever I faced trouble in life, but she never informed me how to pray to God in the first place. Nor did she ever tell me how one can know if God is really interested to help out someone in the first place or not.
With all these thoughts ringing my head back and forth and with no idea how to receive a bit of sympathy from God’s side, I just raised my little frosted hands over to my forehead joining them tightly toward one another and asked God to help me. That was the simplest way which I had always noticed since childhood. Everyone used to offer their prayers in a similar manner and so I humbly acted in the same way as well.
I still remember I was so scared that I actually requested God in my cute little prayers that, “Please! If you are busy at the moment and can’t help me out at this time, kindly inform my mother about the condition in which her daughter is right now and she will instantly come and rescue me back to home.” With that being said I allowed the air to escape out of my palms hoping it to reach God as soon as possible.
In the meantime I covered my face with a pair of frosty hands that chiseled my heart out, buried my face inside my lap hoping for some kind of help to make its way quickly. I don’t know whether or not God did actually hear my prayers that soon because just a few minutes later it felt like the stormy rain had abruptly come to an end. It was really surprising but I realized there were no raindrops falling over my frozen body at that time.
I looked up and there was a fairly large sized umbrella hanging over my head and providing me shelter. Although the umbrella was swinging back and forth wildly as the rapid gusts of wind tried to blow it away from my head, quite surprisingly it never gave way for any sort of raindrops to reach on to my head anymore.
More importantly, the great news along with the umbrella was that these things don’t drag themselves out on their own. There should have been someone holding the umbrella over me as well and I needed to find out who that person was.
Out of all the odds that were stacked against me, it was in fact a boy quite near to my age who was holding an umbrella over my head. Even if someone had to save my soul at that time, I expected that person to be of quite some age as the gathering inside only consisted of senior citizens, but anyway that didn’t matter anymore. I would have been more than happy even if some dog had come near me and presented me an umbrella at that critical time.
I stood up, answering his warm heartfelt greetings, and instantly found a question being raced towards me. The question was obvious that almost everyone passing by me would have definitely liked to ask. “What in the Hell are you doing here at this part of night?” I tried to explain the whole situation in front of him but before I could come to any reasonable beginning he came up with another question in his mind. “Hurry up, tell me what I can do for you right now?”
Completely misunderstanding his concern, I told him that the best thing he can manage to do for me at the present moment was to bang the window of the church somehow and hopefully he’ll be having better luck than me at that.
Just to fulfill my wish, he gave it a go too but since the difference between our ages was very little and that boy wasn’t much of a battleaxe type either so honestly both of us were in the same boat as far as our strengths were concerned.
Anyhow, when the tides turned around to find the brave one, he definitely had the upper hand over mine. I came to know about this fact when after failing several of his attempts on the window of the church, he offered me his assistance by telling me that if I want him to be around, he can walk with me all the way and drop me to my home and won’t turn his back on me till the time I reach my home.
He truly was a year or more elder than me but I wasn’t quite sure if he really meant all those words he dared to pronounce standing right there. The night was definitely too harsh for his age as well. Anyway to cut the whole chase up, I stood there having a daunting spectrum of mixed feelings.
Having spent my entire life in this village, I had never seen this boy ever roaming around or attend any of the parties I used to be in. Apart from that, the reason making me even more scared was that my parents had not given me the freedom to talk to any boy apart from those who belonged to our own family.
With the thoughts of getting scolded or probably banned and punished rigorously by my parents once they found out about their young girl accepting help from a complete stranger, this was seriously something for me to keep in notice. So once more I scanned the boy right from head to toe and there wasn’t even the slightest of hinges in my mind that moved reminding me to call him anything else but a stranger.
On a separate note, time was running out. He wasn’t that good a friend of mine to wait for me till I take all the time in the world deciding only just to trust this fellow or not. So staring at his pale frowning face turn crimson, I had to hurry in making up my mind once and for all.
With his last call lashing out from the other side of the road, he had already made up his mind to leave that place disregarding whether I make my trip with him or without. I waited a moment for him to turn around so that I could finally get a hold of his generosity and sincerity and once he did that I asked him to stop and in saying so I had already taken a few steps towards him.
The two of us set off with the angry winds pushing and dragging us from one side of the road to the other. I was too young to have remembered the way back home so I told him it would be a miracle if I managed to take the two of us back to my home without keeping him wandering around with such heavy rain pouring down on our shoulders all the way. I couldn’t help it, but still, I never wanted to waste much of his time because after all he had to come back the whole way as well.
The trees were whistling, the bushes clasping their hands, and almost all the scary creatures that ever entered my dreams were all there. All along the way, we were the only two people crazy enough to step out and face the barbaric weather. Anyway, we were high on our hopes even if something interrupted our courage. We hardly talked a single sentence during the start of our journey but still both of us had firm belief in each other’s support and confidence.
With a negligible age difference separating the two of us, a really interesting thing was that we both had similar fears. There wasn’t a single thought, about which I was more frightened than him. Rather it came down over my head as more fierce only because my companion on the other side was better off hiding his fears. He seemed all a bit composed and sort of collected somehow. Anyway, whatever the reason was, the only thing positive for me at that moment was that slowly and slowly I was making my way back to my home.
By now, what it looked like was that we had crossed the half way mark by quite a distance and I couldn’t be happier about it. The reason why I didn’t feel scared anymore was because so much time had already past and the journey somehow started feeling secure since all my doubts about mistrusting this individual alongside me had faded and I was happy walking with him. I rather felt myself in really high spirits.
The park where I used to spend the evenings had passed, the dirt tracks where I first learnt cycling was gone too, my school, the plants nursery which fulfilled all my grandfather’s gardening habits, many of my friends homes, and almost everything familiar to me had been crossed and now I could almost see the mystic gas lamps around the corners of my home burning. I experienced such a sigh of relief that it just can’t be explained in words.
All the little few steps that remained I kept on thinking how to thank this boy who had done so much for me. Obviously there was a reason for liking his doings and once we reached home I thanked him so gratefully that I don’t remember thanking anyone in a really long time. There wasn’t much I could offer to him but what I was able to think of, I really tried to convince him to take from my side.
He insisted on his nature of not taking gifts from anyone but after rejecting a lot of my offers I finally convinced him that he will take a raincoat from my side since he had to go back to his own home as well and the storm and darkness were both creeping on more than ever before. The strange thing that I noted next was that even after walking with him for almost an hour I didn’t even ask him where his house actually was.
'How foolish of me,' I said to myself as I walked inside to grab the coat from my room’s closet. Running around the corridor in my soaking wet clothes, I rushed all the way and in less than a minute I found myself back outside and right in front of him. I presented him the raincoat very generously and once again thanked him for his concerns for me.
But still, there was a strange thing in all this presentation party. Every time I thanked him, he seemed surprised and thought about himself somewhat unworthy of such lively emotions.
The last minute of our talk went on with the boy pleading to me that he only wanted to help me and that’s all. He neither takes any gifts nor gives any without the permission of someone above him. I could see him desperately trying to tell me about himself not being what I expect him to be, but when after several attempts I never seemed to understand, he said goodbyes and turned around wearing my raincoat and holding the umbrella in his hand.
The next thing that happened certainly gave me more than just a shock. His image in the storm began to darken up and when I tried to look more closely, a huge gust of wind knocked me off my feet. In a sudden world of distress, I looked over towards the moon and I saw his umbrella swinging back and forth in the air.
After almost another half hour, when I saw the furious face of my grandfather returning home in car driven by one of our close relatives, an idea instantly clicked my mind and when the infuriated old man asked me how I had managed to reach back home in such a harsh storm, I simply lied that one of my dad’s friend's dropped me home in his car once the generous man noticed someone standing alone outside the church in a massive storm.
A long time has passed since then and until now; I haven’t informed anyone of such an adventure. At that time I was too small to get hold of such things. Now after almost seven more years in the making, I am fourteen and scratching my mind full of curiosity since so long. I now know that the person I was making out as a toddler of my age was in fact an angel sent by God, once he looked over to my crying image in the centre of the road, wet with rainwater, but even more than that by my own tears. Not many people experience such a wonder in their entire lifetime and now that I know I have experienced truly a sensational miracle, I am so happy to remember God being on my side while everything else opposed my presence in the very worst manners! Thank God I am here telling you this story of mine which I know could have ended much worse.
---Author---
Arsal Shoaib
Long Way From Home(Arsal Shoaib)
The Night was dark and the storm even more intense. Standing outside, by now I could almost feel a bit of drizzle over my head. My soft slippery skin was unable to resist the cold and wet drops of rain passing through and giving me little shocks of cold the entire time. The only thought that was taking up in my mind at that very time was, 'Why did I ever listen to my grandfather anyway?'
The two of us had started off on foot in the evening. Just because my mom and dad had to go out of town for a day or two and so I had to be the one accompanying my grandfather to the church in the evening because he couldn’t miss tonight’s convention being held under the roof of an age old cathedral. After all, you cannot leave a seven year old girl alone at home right?
I was never interested to go with grandpa in the first place. Being a girl, and rather an overly active one among my fellows, I would have been more happy if I had been skipping with my friends throughout the night or watching cartoons all day long for that matter.
But I just wasn’t that fortunate. There was no way I could have managed to convince my mom and dad about my betterment and present them a spectrum of opinions with just seven years of experience living in this world. So to cut the whole chase up, there we were finally standing on the doorsteps of a fairly small cathedral compared to those which I had seen previously in the television documentaries. Anyway, the size of the church was not a thing to worry about. What came next was actually the test of my patience. Although my feelings had started to turn bitter right when I was forced to make my way with grandpa today, but they took a flight when we were greeted by a stout old gentleman right on the tall medieval style door of the church.
To my surprise, and my grandfather’s unknowing, only grey heads were allowed inside for the gathering and the proceedings. To make it simple to understand, the old age fellow told us that only the elders of this village are invited tonight. He further inquired from my grandfather about the notice which they had sent at our home and told him that there was a special notice written at the bottom corner informing everyone that children are not allowed. My grandfather rubbed his already half bald head after realizing that he had read that notice but failed to remember when it came down to the decision of whether to take me along or not.
Obviously this made me go mad at him and I just walked away trying not to talk to him although he was trying to apologize for his mistake. Anyhow, he went inside and the door shut back with a loud noise. Pretending that I am going to leave him there and get back home on my own, I had already taken a few steps away from the building. The last voice I heard from my grandpa was informing me to stay outside and wait for a while till he comes out. “It won’t take more than half an hour” he said, but once I turned around to grab his attention, the door had already been closed.
I stood there waiting! Obviously that was the only thing I could do on my own at that time. Boring it certainly was, but there was no way back for me. I was too young and too afraid to make my way back at night, especially when home meant almost an hour of walk down the road. There was no chance I was going back. Even if I did manage to somehow fight the scary monsters getting in my way I certainly would have been unable to fight an even bigger monster living inside my grandfather’s temperament when once he would have got the news of my return to home alone at night.
Well it wasn’t long before it started to rain. Earlier I had heard the meteorologists on television shouting about a storm making its way towards our village tonight and now there it lay right in front of me. The moment I saw rain drops splashing over the road I was really scared. To be honest I had loved rain all my life. It’s such a great feeling when your mom doesn’t mind and allows you to play in the rain. But this rain is surely something else.
The rain I was facing now was a lot more dreadful. Although the rain was like the one which used to fall everywhere else every time, but the only thing that was making me frightened was the fact that there was no mom present nor was anyone else for that matter.
The only thing that showed a slight bit of positivity was the fact that ten minutes out of the desired thirty had passed. In the best case I just had to pass twenty more minutes by any means possible and then my grandfather would come out and save my night for sure. But seriously, do you really think best case scenarios ever do exist in life?
Forty minutes had passed since my grandpa left me out and so that meant I was facing the rain for quite some time. By now the tree under which I was trying to gain shelter had given way. The leaves were all filled with water and didn’t remain much of a shelter any longer. Standing under it or standing without it remained one or the same thing. Actually I believed standing away from it was a better idea because the heavy storm was already making the tree’s branches swing wildly and even though I was a bit too small for this kind of prediction, still even a little toddler like me was able to figure out that the tree was not going to hold on there for much longer.
I changed my place and decided to sneak inside the cathedral through one of the windows which I could see was peaceful and quiet inside. The heavy doors and walls packed with thick windows and a strong shelter overhead was making everyone at ease. I had serious doubts if any one of the people inside even had a slight idea of what was going on outside.
I even tried to bang one or two windows in my reach but that proved useless as well. After all, what can you expect from the strength of a seven year old girl. I never really possessed a battle axe type of personality and realizing that, I even used some rocks to somehow break any of the windows and inform someone what was going on outside, but that was no good as well. After a few desperate attempts I cursed the people behind such a strong building design and left that place.
Since there was no other way to escape the harsh rainstorm pouring mercilessly over me, a cute little angel, eventually I had no other option rather than to stand still right in the middle of the road because that seemed to me the farthest place for a falling tree which might knock this already scared seven year old down.
Desperately trying to search for a familiar face, I looked in all the possible directions, but this search turned out just to make matters worse for me. Every time I looked around myself and tried to focus a bit on the distant trees, a sort of thunder always lighted the whole place up and before I had enough time to blink, all of the clear images would darken up again.
Although the lightening never threatened me much, once it swept away it left darkness again, and I felt shadows around me everywhere and trees creeping closer all the time.
Like any girl of my age, I found myself obviously trembling. With my legs shaking wildly, my fists clenched tightly and half my body almost frozen dead, I felt myself truly in the worst situation I had ever faced. There was no sight of anyone near except for those who were relishing their chit chats inside the church with roaring fireplaces keeping them warm. Facing my fears in such miserable conditions, I sat right there on the middle of the road and started crying.
Every raindrop felt like an icy brick falling straight from the sky right on my back. I heard once when mom was telling me to pray to God whenever I faced trouble in life, but she never informed me how to pray to God in the first place. Nor did she ever tell me how one can know if God is really interested to help out someone in the first place or not.
With all these thoughts ringing my head back and forth and with no idea how to receive a bit of sympathy from God’s side, I just raised my little frosted hands over to my forehead joining them tightly toward one another and asked God to help me. That was the simplest way which I had always noticed since childhood. Everyone used to offer their prayers in a similar manner and so I humbly acted in the same way as well.
I still remember I was so scared that I actually requested God in my cute little prayers that, “Please! If you are busy at the moment and can’t help me out at this time, kindly inform my mother about the condition in which her daughter is right now and she will instantly come and rescue me back to home.” With that being said I allowed the air to escape out of my palms hoping it to reach God as soon as possible.
In the meantime I covered my face with a pair of frosty hands that chiseled my heart out, buried my face inside my lap hoping for some kind of help to make its way quickly. I don’t know whether or not God did actually hear my prayers that soon because just a few minutes later it felt like the stormy rain had abruptly come to an end. It was really surprising but I realized there were no raindrops falling over my frozen body at that time.
I looked up and there was a fairly large sized umbrella hanging over my head and providing me shelter. Although the umbrella was swinging back and forth wildly as the rapid gusts of wind tried to blow it away from my head, quite surprisingly it never gave way for any sort of raindrops to reach on to my head anymore.
More importantly, the great news along with the umbrella was that these things don’t drag themselves out on their own. There should have been someone holding the umbrella over me as well and I needed to find out who that person was.
Out of all the odds that were stacked against me, it was in fact a boy quite near to my age who was holding an umbrella over my head. Even if someone had to save my soul at that time, I expected that person to be of quite some age as the gathering inside only consisted of senior citizens, but anyway that didn’t matter anymore. I would have been more than happy even if some dog had come near me and presented me an umbrella at that critical time.
I stood up, answering his warm heartfelt greetings, and instantly found a question being raced towards me. The question was obvious that almost everyone passing by me would have definitely liked to ask. “What in the Hell are you doing here at this part of night?” I tried to explain the whole situation in front of him but before I could come to any reasonable beginning he came up with another question in his mind. “Hurry up, tell me what I can do for you right now?”
Completely misunderstanding his concern, I told him that the best thing he can manage to do for me at the present moment was to bang the window of the church somehow and hopefully he’ll be having better luck than me at that.
Just to fulfill my wish, he gave it a go too but since the difference between our ages was very little and that boy wasn’t much of a battleaxe type either so honestly both of us were in the same boat as far as our strengths were concerned.
Anyhow, when the tides turned around to find the brave one, he definitely had the upper hand over mine. I came to know about this fact when after failing several of his attempts on the window of the church, he offered me his assistance by telling me that if I want him to be around, he can walk with me all the way and drop me to my home and won’t turn his back on me till the time I reach my home.
He truly was a year or more elder than me but I wasn’t quite sure if he really meant all those words he dared to pronounce standing right there. The night was definitely too harsh for his age as well. Anyway to cut the whole chase up, I stood there having a daunting spectrum of mixed feelings.
Having spent my entire life in this village, I had never seen this boy ever roaming around or attend any of the parties I used to be in. Apart from that, the reason making me even more scared was that my parents had not given me the freedom to talk to any boy apart from those who belonged to our own family.
With the thoughts of getting scolded or probably banned and punished rigorously by my parents once they found out about their young girl accepting help from a complete stranger, this was seriously something for me to keep in notice. So once more I scanned the boy right from head to toe and there wasn’t even the slightest of hinges in my mind that moved reminding me to call him anything else but a stranger.
On a separate note, time was running out. He wasn’t that good a friend of mine to wait for me till I take all the time in the world deciding only just to trust this fellow or not. So staring at his pale frowning face turn crimson, I had to hurry in making up my mind once and for all.
With his last call lashing out from the other side of the road, he had already made up his mind to leave that place disregarding whether I make my trip with him or without. I waited a moment for him to turn around so that I could finally get a hold of his generosity and sincerity and once he did that I asked him to stop and in saying so I had already taken a few steps towards him.
The two of us set off with the angry winds pushing and dragging us from one side of the road to the other. I was too young to have remembered the way back home so I told him it would be a miracle if I managed to take the two of us back to my home without keeping him wandering around with such heavy rain pouring down on our shoulders all the way. I couldn’t help it, but still, I never wanted to waste much of his time because after all he had to come back the whole way as well.
The trees were whistling, the bushes clasping their hands, and almost all the scary creatures that ever entered my dreams were all there. All along the way, we were the only two people crazy enough to step out and face the barbaric weather. Anyway, we were high on our hopes even if something interrupted our courage. We hardly talked a single sentence during the start of our journey but still both of us had firm belief in each other’s support and confidence.
With a negligible age difference separating the two of us, a really interesting thing was that we both had similar fears. There wasn’t a single thought, about which I was more frightened than him. Rather it came down over my head as more fierce only because my companion on the other side was better off hiding his fears. He seemed all a bit composed and sort of collected somehow. Anyway, whatever the reason was, the only thing positive for me at that moment was that slowly and slowly I was making my way back to my home.
By now, what it looked like was that we had crossed the half way mark by quite a distance and I couldn’t be happier about it. The reason why I didn’t feel scared anymore was because so much time had already past and the journey somehow started feeling secure since all my doubts about mistrusting this individual alongside me had faded and I was happy walking with him. I rather felt myself in really high spirits.
The park where I used to spend the evenings had passed, the dirt tracks where I first learnt cycling was gone too, my school, the plants nursery which fulfilled all my grandfather’s gardening habits, many of my friends homes, and almost everything familiar to me had been crossed and now I could almost see the mystic gas lamps around the corners of my home burning. I experienced such a sigh of relief that it just can’t be explained in words.
All the little few steps that remained I kept on thinking how to thank this boy who had done so much for me. Obviously there was a reason for liking his doings and once we reached home I thanked him so gratefully that I don’t remember thanking anyone in a really long time. There wasn’t much I could offer to him but what I was able to think of, I really tried to convince him to take from my side.
He insisted on his nature of not taking gifts from anyone but after rejecting a lot of my offers I finally convinced him that he will take a raincoat from my side since he had to go back to his own home as well and the storm and darkness were both creeping on more than ever before. The strange thing that I noted next was that even after walking with him for almost an hour I didn’t even ask him where his house actually was.
'How foolish of me,' I said to myself as I walked inside to grab the coat from my room’s closet. Running around the corridor in my soaking wet clothes, I rushed all the way and in less than a minute I found myself back outside and right in front of him. I presented him the raincoat very generously and once again thanked him for his concerns for me.
But still, there was a strange thing in all this presentation party. Every time I thanked him, he seemed surprised and thought about himself somewhat unworthy of such lively emotions.
The last minute of our talk went on with the boy pleading to me that he only wanted to help me and that’s all. He neither takes any gifts nor gives any without the permission of someone above him. I could see him desperately trying to tell me about himself not being what I expect him to be, but when after several attempts I never seemed to understand, he said goodbyes and turned around wearing my raincoat and holding the umbrella in his hand.
The next thing that happened certainly gave me more than just a shock. His image in the storm began to darken up and when I tried to look more closely, a huge gust of wind knocked me off my feet. In a sudden world of distress, I looked over towards the moon and I saw his umbrella swinging back and forth in the air.
After almost another half hour, when I saw the furious face of my grandfather returning home in car driven by one of our close relatives, an idea instantly clicked my mind and when the infuriated old man asked me how I had managed to reach back home in such a harsh storm, I simply lied that one of my dad’s friend's dropped me home in his car once the generous man noticed someone standing alone outside the church in a massive storm.
A long time has passed since then and until now; I haven’t informed anyone of such an adventure. At that time I was too small to get hold of such things. Now after almost seven more years in the making, I am fourteen and scratching my mind full of curiosity since so long. I now know that the person I was making out as a toddler of my age was in fact an angel sent by God, once he looked over to my crying image in the centre of the road, wet with rainwater, but even more than that by my own tears. Not many people experience such a wonder in their entire lifetime and now that I know I have experienced truly a sensational miracle, I am so happy to remember God being on my side while everything else opposed my presence in the very worst manners! Thank God I am here telling you this story of mine which I know could have ended much worse.
---Author---
Arsal Shoaib
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