Toy Soldier

January 1st. As I woke up in the morning and opened the door, I could smell the odour of last night's firework. People were cleaning up the streets, others visited the graveyard, some were preparing to go to the mosque and perform the Friday-pray. In our street, there are always kids who look for unused fire-works, in the hope that they may be able to ignite it and have some fun.

Unfortunately, they're not aware of the danger of these small little things and just light-up every single piece of cracklings they can find. Yesterday, two of our little neighbours were also participating in this group of kids and they found this piece of fire-work named "Nitraat", also known as "The Tank". Nitraat is one of them things that you can only get from places like Belgium and its announced illegal after 2000, since too many people were losing an eye or at least a finger because of these things.

(Younes @ First-Aid 15 minutes after the blast. Got cleaned up a bit)

Anyhow, to get back to our little neighbour Younes. Younes a kid of 12 was participating in this group of kids and found the Nitraat. He thought that it would've been fun to ignite this little thing and throw it away at the last second. The kid never knew he was holding that bomb in his hand which blows up adult's fingers. My brothers and I were at the end of the street, getting ready to drop-off some friends at the Airport. As we were loading our luggage in the boot of the car, we heard this loud blast in the middle of the street and all we could see was a bit of smoke. We thought that it was just one of them kids messing about, but then we saw two kids running towards us. From far I recognized one of them, it was our neighbour. When they came closer towards us, we saw that the kid who was running at the front was not looking all too well. He was running a bit lame and as he approached us, we saw that his face was all under blood. Faisal, my brother didn't hesitate for a second, carried the kid and raced towards the First-Aid. Now this little moment in the car is the reason I wanted to write this article.

As Faisal, Saad, Umar C, Younes and I were going towards the First-Aid, the kid saw how worried we were looking at him. He knew that something is wrong and he's not going to like what he'll see. He felt the pain and the shock was even worse. He was in such a panic and when he found out that there's nobody to help him at this very moment, only thing what this little kid started to shout was:

Laillaha Illallah! Laillaha Illallah! Allah Help me! Help me! Please, I've been so stupid, help me!

For this one particular moment I just kept quiet and started to think...

This little kid, he doesn't know all too much about life... He's still messing about and experiencing things, but now that he knows that he's in a position where he can still feel his skin burning, he only remembered Allah. He forgot all about his clothes, his friends, his family, his possessions, his looks, etc. etc. He didn't care about any single thing! Only thing what he did was communicate with Allah. He requested, repented, and also cried to Allah. It looked like something natural. A natural instinct...

He went quite for a moment and Faisal was breaking every single rule of driving in these 15/20 streets that he had to race through. When this kid looked at his hand palm, he saw the wounds and burned skin, he started to shout again!

Oh Allah Help me! Help me! I'm sorry, I've been stupid!

As I was sitting there next to him I realized and just learned so much in these 2 minutes... That it is Allah we all came from and it is him we'll all return to! At the end when you've done something you shouldn't have, you'll go and ask Him for forgiveness. You'll go and request Him for a little bit more time so you may do it different this time. Even though I know a lot of born-Muslims who say that: "I don't really believe in Him because I've never seen something physically of Him, never seen a miracle or He never helped me out with something!" Still, it's He we'll a go to and it's He we'll all ask for!

Alhamdullilah, Younes was given higher priority in the First-Aid. Doctors took good care of him, and were trying to explain us how lucky he is that he’ll leave this place just with some wounds.