Almost every day, I read or hear people lost their lives for cell phones & here a boy wanted to return mine.
KARACHI: I am compelled to pen down the following lines because if I don’t, then I will not be doing justice to an eight-year-old boy I came across recently. It so happened that Friday before last, I went to Masjid-e-Ibrahim, in Phase IV, DHA, Karachi, for my prayers and sat on a bench to remove my shoes. In my earnestness to get a good seating inside the mosque, I hurriedly put my shoes on the stand and went inside the mosque. After almost 10 to 12 minutes, I suddenly realised that I was missing something and to my horror found that I had left my two Blackberry cell phones on the bench. I rushed to the site and to my utter dismay, found them missing.
I stood there in a state of shock wondering whom to ask in a congregation of over 600 people. I sat on the bench dejected, and from nowhere, a little boy no older than eight years of age, asked me in a dialect that made me feel that he was from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, “Are you searching for something?” I did not reply thinking, how could a child help me in my misery? The boy again questioned me and at this, I told him that I had lost my cell phones and was looking for them.
He then went on to ask me if I could describe the cell phones I had lost. On describing them, he took out my cell phones and gave them to me.
This was the second shock that I received that day. Almost every day, I read or hear that people have lost their lives for mere cell phones, and here was a little boy who wanted to return not one but two cell phones to me.
I took the cell phones and sitting in the mosque, still in a state of shock, prayed before the Almighty that the kid may, through His mercy, be made the leader of this nation when he grows up. My countrymen, I still see some light at the end of the tunnel. I salute his parents.
Mirajuddin Aziz
Published in The Express Tribune, April 21st, 2013.
