I gasped for air, which seemed to have been sucked out of the trailer and my heart jumped to my throat. A wave of panic ripped through me as the vehicle came to a halt. This one moment, I had dreaded for months. I heard the creak of the door. The driver had gone out to talk to the soldiers at the border crossing. I could not hear what the talk was about but the fact that it continued for fifteen minutes haunted me. Suddenly, a loud, tremulous sound scythed through the air, piercing through my heart- it was a gunshot. I was certain it had been aimed at the driver and that it was all over. I should have never tried to cross the borders illegally to reach the UAE if Amanullah-my childhood friend had not wrongly advised me. All my teenage years were spent indifferent to the fact that there was a tomorrow and by the time I was 25, I realised that I was like a man marooned in the desert, without a compass, without a map and without a camel. The emptiness in my soul matched a dark starless night. I was unemployed, hopeless and in a dire situation when I met Amanullah.
He had told me how his cousin transported people illegally across the borders. “There is a myriad of jobs in the UAE”, he had told me. In the darkness of the trailer, I gazed out of the small air hole on one side. The driver stood there, surprisingly, alive. The gun had been shot by the soldier as some sort of a signal for his colleague standing farther away. Pressing my eyelids together, I sighed in relief. The sound of the container’s door opening sent me into a panic attack before I could gather myself from the first. I was veiled with the sacks as were other companions of mine. “Such a bad advice, Amanullah” I thought and cursed myself for being so audacious in the first place. I whispered a prayer through lips that did not seem to be mine. I felt the sack above me being lifted. I kept my eyes closed like a pigeon in the claws of a cat. “They are gone,” I heard our driver say. I felt surprised at the suspense of nature. Another week of travel brought me to my current abode and at the end, all was well.
BILAL ASHRAF X O
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