MINA, 1 January 2007 — Clouds of gloom hovered over a group of Keralite pilgrims here and their relatives back home on the first day of Eid as they began mourning the death of a loved one — until they received a mobile phone call from him.
“I could not believe my ears it was him, alhamdulillah, he was still alive and well,” said Muhyudeen, the 32-year-old son of Mammed Kurumparammal, 65.
Mammed went missing from Muzdalifah on Saturday morning when he and his wife got separated in the crowd. For hours the family tried calling the old man on his mobile phone, but found it to be turned off.
At 10 p.m. that evening a man with an Egyptian accent answered yet another attempt to call Mammed. The voice in the other end of the line told Muhyudeen’s cousin that his uncle had passed away and was in a hospital mortuary in Mina.
“My cousin kept it a secret,” said Muhyudeen. “He didn’t want to tell me that my father was dead.”
Stricken with grief the cousin called his brother in Kerala and passed on the news. Eventually the news spread across the family and reached its way back to Mina where the cousin was finally persuaded to break the news to Mammed’s wife and son.
The family proceeded to search every mortuary in Mina yesterday, to no avail. Then, out of the blue, they received a call from Mammed, who was very much alive at an emergency room at a local hospital. He was calling from a mobile phone he borrowed from a doctor on staff at the hospital. He had been treated for an asthma attack, he said, and that his phone had been stolen.
Wife, son and relatives switched from mourning to celebration, but they also wondered what kind of thief this was.
“He created misery for us,” said Muhyudeen. “He steals my father’s phone and then plays such an awful prank. No sane person would do both.”
