MINA, 14 January 2006 — Between 40 and 50 people were sitting outside the gate of Al-Muaisem Emergency Medical Center yesterday in tears, crying for the loss of their beloved ones. Suddenly, a man jumped among the crowd smiling and hugging all those around him.
“She’s not dead! Thank God! She’s not dead!” shouted Ayed Abdullah after he received a mobile phone call. It was one of the lost pilgrims centers. She was alive. She did not die at the Jamrat Bridge.
Hours earlier, Abdullah had come to the hospital with a firm conviction that his mother was among the dead.
“We were at one of the entrances to the Jamrat Bridge when people started pushing each other and at that moment it was clear that I might lose my mother,” said Abdullah. “I was clutching my mother’s hands, trying hard to reach the side where the Saudi emergency personnel were standing and taking people into their protection. But when I was about to hand them my mother, the unexpected happened: A human wave carried my mother away.”
After that Abdullah started searching everywhere for his mother, but his efforts went in vain. There were tens of thousands doing the same thing and he felt himself being carried with the ebb and flow of the crowd.
“I managed to get out of the crowd, and immediately I started an organized search in lost pilgrims centers. I inquired about her at all police stations. After I gave them her description, I gave my mobile number to the lost pilgrim center and asked them to call me if they found her, and left in despair,” said Abdullah. “How could she survive since she is old and weak?”
Abdullah’s mother, however, did survive the human tsunami. She was standing next to the bridge when the Saudi Boy Scouts found her. They took her to one of the lost pilgrims centers.
Meanwhile, Abdullah was in the front of Al-Muaisem Hospital, where the bodies of the victims were carried, waiting for any news on his mother. Arab News found him sitting on the ground waiting for someone to call his name so that he can go inside and look for his mother among the dead.
At that moment, he received the heavenly mobile phone call from the lost pilgrims center telling him that they found his mother.
This is not the only incident where the Saudi Boys Scouts played a decisive role in saving lives and rejoining families. The Boy Scouts were indeed the true heroes in many stories this Haj season.
