The evening breeze began to blow over the island, taking on the colours of the sunset as it set its course towards the large western horizon while Ali sat wearily beside his son, who lay unconscious on the ground.
It had been a long time since he had last emerged from the water, dragging his son’s body to the shore before wrapping his cold body in some warm blankets he kept in his boat.
The boy’s body was entirely pale, exhausted, and still motionless. His left thigh had been bleeding a lot before his father wrapped a large piece of cloth around it to press against the bleeding from a long deep gash up to his knee.
Luckily, his head was not injured from hitting the tough rock but the boy’s pulse was still very weak, barely noticeable, and his breaths were very slow and almost inaudible.
“You will not die, Ahmed,” mumbled Ali, his words choked with tears. “You are a brave fisherman. I know you will fight for your life, won’t you, son?”
He grabbed his son’s palm and held it between his shaking fingers before kissing it warmly. “I will not dig your grave with my hands, Ahmed. Please don’t do this for me, my son. You will kill me if you leave me alone.”
Then, desperately, he checked his pulse again, but it was growing slower. The miserable father knew his son was fighting for his life, but he could do nothing except sit helpless at his head.
When he had rushed to him underwater, Ahmed lost consciousness after being tossed about by the furious current for a while. Fortunately, he didn’t lose his oxygen tank and was still breathing.
Ali had quickly wrapped the rope around his son’s waist, then tied it around his, put his son’s arms around his shoulders, and swam quickly towards the passage. Then, he carefully pulled his son’s body through it before bringing him to the surface of the water, racing against time so that the remaining oxygen in his bottle would not run out.
The poor man was distressed. He didn’t know what he was about to do or what had happened to his son. His only concern was to get him out from under the water before he suffocated or lost too much blood.
Time seemed to crawl as Ali remained rooted to the spot, holding his son’s hand who was unable to move, checking his pulse, breathing, and heartbeat.
His blood froze as he thought of losing his son in his arms and had nothing to save him except the tattered cloth he had wrapped around his body.
For a long while, his throat went dry as he called for help, but who would come to this isolated corner of the beach now that night was falling over the empty shore? Who would know that he and his son had gone to search the wreckage of the sunken ship? No one. Even his wife didn’t know.
His painful breaths quickened as he remembered his wife. What would he say to her? How could he face her holding his dead son in his arms?
Suddenly, he clenched his fists and began banging his head violently, screaming with deep pain, “Why did I agree with him, oh Allah? Why didn’t I stop him from going to his death? I killed my firstborn son with my own hands. I killed the only hope in my life.”
He shook his head furiously trying to chase the gloomy thoughts that raged inside him but the loud voices grew louder inside his head, like sharp daggers tearing at his exhausted soul.
“What if I run to the village searching for help?” he wondered as he looked around in distress at the darkness of the pitch-black night that had enveloped the place. “But if I leave him alone, he will be devoured by the hungry stray dogs.”
Suddenly he burst into tears raising his head to the gloomy sky, “Oh Allah, you know that I have no one but my son. He is the light of my eyes and all I have in this world. You know that I have helped every person who asked me for it, and all the island witnesses this. Help me and save my son.”
His faint, weak prayers barely echoed through the quiet night, cut by a few nesting birds’ sounds among the branches of the tall coconut and palm trees. Then, all of a sudden, he heard distant shouts and a loud truck engine roar.
He held his breath for a while as the voices started to get closer, and to his great surprise, a bright, warm light emerged from the tens of torches that surrounded the place.
“Ali, is it you?” yelled one of the villagers as he rushed toward the poor fisherman. “Oh Allah, is this Ahmed? What happened to him?” he asked as the other men carefully carried the boy and put him in the back of the truck.
It was his neighbour and childhood friend Hakim. He had felt his absence and sensed that something bad had happened to him, particularly when Ali’s wife came asking for help. He and the villagers promptly began searching for him all over the island until they found him in this isolated place.
“He will be fine, don’t worry,” whispered Hakim as he held his sobbing friend. “The ambulance will take him and Baraka to the hospital. Everything is well prepared, don’t worry.”
“Ambulance? Which ambulance?” asked Ali in confusion.
“Oh yes. You don’t know about that,” responded Hakim, grasping his friend’s cold hand tightly. “We had called the doctor, and he had arranged an ambulance to take Baraka to the hospital for the operation. It is waiting in front of your hut. We were expecting you before you left. Baraka will have the operation in the big city tomorrow and Ahmed will be treated as well. Everything will be fine my friend.”
“And the expenses of the operation?” asked Ahmed anxiously as he rode behind his friend’s bike, following the truck that was speeding towards the hut. “The money, oh yes. We raised all the money,” replied Hakim confidently. “Everyone on the island donated some of what they had and we raised the money needed for the operation of Baraka and more. I didn’t want to tell you this because I didn’t expect us to raise the necessary money in time.”
“What did you think?” he added as he turned to Ali, who still had not recovered from the surprise. “Did you think people were ungrateful? Did you think they would stand idly by and watch you suffer?”
He was silent for a few seconds before asking curiously, “By the way, what were you and Ahmed doing in this isolated part of the beach?”
“Nothing,” muttered Ali in a broken voice, clutching a few coins still in his pouch. “It is no longer important, my friend.”
Then he added, as his words were drowned out by the noise of the bike engines mixed with the loud voices of the villagers, “We were just fighting for a shadow of hope like raging bulls going to their deaths while the real one awaited us on the other side of the island.”
The End
