Harrowing time
“When I came to, I saw that I was bleeding from my right leg, my right hand, and my neck. My phone had been smashed because of the accident.”
But Ali knew there were others who needed his help. The next few hours of his life would be among the most harrowing.
“I made my way back to the accident site, and saw the driver of the bus,” he revealed. “I shook him by the shoulder, but he didn’t respond and I knew that he had left this world.
“Then I went back to my truck and took the head of my colleague Akhtar in my hands,” explained Ali. “He was an electrician who had travelled with me. I tried to gently wake him, but I knew that he too was no more. My other colleague has spinal injuries, but I don’t know how badly he’s injured.”
“Images of the accident had already spread across social media, and I heard the phone of the bus driver ringing, so I answered it. Someone was asking for Usman, and I realised it was his mother on the line,” he said.
“How could I have told them that their son had died? I just told them that he was in an accident and I didn’t know anything else, because I just didn’t have the heart to tell them,” said Ali.
Throwing caution to the winds, Ali then ventured into the smashed remains of the bus.
“There were many people desperately shouting for help from the wreckage of the bus, and despite bleeding profusely, I knew they needed aid, so I went over to see what I could do. There were two small children who were crying for their mother, who had also lost a lot of blood,” he said.
There was nothing I could do to comfort them, but sit down next to them, so I did that, and that was the last thing I remember because I fainted soon afterwards,” added Ali. “I woke up in Haima hospital.”
Ali’s own parents thought he was dead as well. He’d returned to Pakistan to get married just last September.
The 3rd of May marked his sixmonth wedding anniversary, and his mother, who thought her son had died, was so grief-stricken by the news that she remained bedridden for two days.
“I rang them up and had to convince them that I wasn’t dead,” said Ali. “But what I have suffered is nothing compared to what the two families who’ve lost their sons will have to now undergo.”
Ali’s company told him to take all the rest he needs, and have instructed him to return to work only when he feels well enough.
“It’s a good thing that the government is building roads across Oman so that tragedies like this can be avoided in the future,” he said. “It may not seem like it right now, but Oman takes much better care of the people who live here, than the governments back home do.”