By : Ihab Abdurrahman<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First of all, I would like to say that the story I\u2019m going to tell happened during my childhood in 1983. Still, I do remember every single detail as if it happened yesterday. What happened to me got printed in my head and had a great impact on my life in all aspects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was 6 years-old and I wasn\u2019t enrolled in school yet. I was my parents\u2019 only child and my mother was so protective that she never allowed me to play in the backyard unless she is with me. To be honest, I was a very naughty child and I often get involved in troubles. I used to break dishes or vases and get away with it, while my mother and grandmother (my father\u2019s mother) argue about it. So, it was a big large house and we lived in a room in the second floor. The house was located at a prestigious area which disappeared by now and became a center of medical laboratories and medical clinics. Unfortunately, one of the houses that have been sold and demolished is my grandfather\u2019, the place I lived in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had a beautiful balcony in our room overlooking the garden; it was about 3 meters high above the garden. It had a rectangular shape and if you look down you can see a courtyard of concrete of 2 meters in width. It separates the house and a beautiful large garden. The garden was like heaven to me, it had citrus trees or what we call in Irag Narenj (bitter orange), in addition to orange, lemon, oak trees and palms. My grandmother planted a lot of plants and flowers and she took care of them very well. The balcony had a fence of 30 centimeters surmounted by a white and a beautifully engraved metal hedge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course it was forbidden for me to sit at the balcony by myself. One day, I was playing in our room and my mother was hanging laundry to the clothesline when my grandmother called her. She went to talk to her and left the door to the balcony open. I took the chance, went to the balcony, climbed the metal hedge and stretched my body out of the balcony, trying to reach a branch. Suddenly, my mother came in and screamed in horror\u201d Ihab! Get down, immediately!\u201d I freaked out and loosed the hedge. I fell down in the courtyard and my mother\u2019s screaming was the last thing I remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a while, I opened my eyes and saw my mother, grandmother and my aunts crying and shouting. I stood up and told them \u201cWhy are you crying? I\u2019m alright, please stop crying\u201d but they couldn\u2019t hear me. I was so surprised that they can\u2019t see me! The weird thing of all is that their voices seemed heavy as if they shout in slow motion! I was trying to hug my mother and tell her that I\u2019m okay but it was useless, she wasn\u2019t even looking at me, she was looking somewhere else. I looked where she was looking and I was shocked, she was looking at my body! My body was there on the floor, my eyes were closed and my head was profusely bleeding. My body was on the floor and I was standing there at the same look at myself! This was so strange! However, I wasn\u2019t so scared; I had this weird calmness deep inside. Everything around was so calm except for the crying of my mother, aunties and grandmother that sounded so far away as if it was coming from a deep well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And while I\u2019m on this condition, I heard children\u2019s laughter, I looked around and there was no one. Gradually, the laughter voice got louder that I couldn\u2019t hear the women\u2019s crying anymore. \u201cWhat does this laughter come from?\u201d I wondered, I looked right and left and there was nothing! I looked up and saw something that was hard to believe. There were little girls and boys playing up in the air just above my head. They were flying like birds and they were cheerful and laughing of happiness. Their faces were amazingly bright and so was the sky!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was taken by the children\u2019s joy and was distracted for a while from what happened to me. After that, I saw people coming in to my house and one of them was our neighbor Abu Ahmed who was a doctor. He yelled\u201d Don\u2019t be afraid, he will be alright by God\u2019s will, give him some space so he can breathe\u201d. He was blowing in my mouth and pressing my chest, he was giving CPR of course but I was too young to know what he was doing. I wasn\u2019t afraid but I felt sorry for my mother. I looked at her and shouted hopefully she hears me \u201cI\u2019m here mom, I\u2019m fine, please don\u2019t cry\u201d. However, all my attempts were useless. I looked up again to the children and one of them was waving to me as if he was trying to tell me come up here. I yelled \u201cI can\u2019t fly\u201d but he continued to wave to go up there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the meanwhile, a pretty young woman showed up from the front door. She was so beautiful and shining. She was wearing white and looked like she was walking in the air! I felt pleased to see her and stood speechless gazing at her. She approached me, smiled at me and said \u201cdon\u2019t be afraid my dear Ihab\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not afraid, I just feel sorry for my mother. Can\u2019t you see how sad she is?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said \u201cit\u2019s alright my darling. She will cry for a while and then stops!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I told her\u201d How come you see me while they can\u2019t\u201d Pointing out to the men and women standing by my body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She softly replied\u201d They are alive my dear and we are dead\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What she said was quite strange to me! Dead! I had no idea what she was talking about. I was only 6 and don\u2019t know what death really means. Once, I heard my mother talking about my dead uncle and when I asked her where did he go, she said that he went up to the sky to live happily ever after. So, I told that woman \u201caren\u2019t we supposed to go the sky now?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She gently said\u201d Maybe it is not your time yet\u2026not now\u2026 maybe many years later you can join them and fly with them\u201d pointing out to the children up in the air. She added \u201cdon\u2019t fear death, it\u2019s not something bad\u201d, then she kissed me on the forehead and said \u201cconvey my greetings and my love to your mother\u201d. She moved away and the farther she moved, the darker everything became around me. I could no longer see or hear anything and I was completely lost in darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I opened my eyes again and I saw my mother and many other people sitting around me, crying and begging God to have mercy on me. I had a terrible pain in my head and I started to cry, then everybody in the room yelled\u201d Thank God! He is alive\u201d. I was taken to the hospital where the doctors stitched my wound and covered it with gauze bandage. According to the medical checks and radiography reports, I had no serious injury and I would be recovered within few days. My mother was by my side during all of this. My father came in to the hospital and was so panicked and had tears in his eyes. He hugged me so tight that almost broke my ribs. I went home the same day with bandage on my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few days later, my injuries were fully recovered and I was playing at the kitchen while my mother and grandmother were having tea. Suddenly, I turned to my mother and said \u201cOh! I forgot to tell you about the pretty young woman I met. She sends her greetings to you\u201d My mother strangely looked at me and said\u201d What young woman my dear?\u201d I replied\u201d the one whom I met while you were crying over my body at the courtyard\u201d My grandmother looked at me and wondered \u201cdid you hear us crying?\u201d I enthusiastically said \u201cYes I did. I talked to you and told you I was fine but you couldn\u2019t hear me. So, the woman with the shining face came and told me that you can\u2019t hear me because you were alive and we were dead!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother unconsciously dropped the cup she was holding. My grandmother said \u201cWhat are you talking about my dear? Maybe you were dreaming\u201d. I tenaciously replied \u201cNo, I wasn\u2019t dreaming. There were cheerful children flying in the sky\u201d. What I said disturbed my mother, she looked at me and insisted \u201cIt was nothing more than a dream my dear\u201d. I doggedly said again \u201cNo I wasn\u2019t! I even saw our neighbor Abu Ahmed rescuing me\u201d. There was silence, they looked at each other, then my grandmother ended the conversation saying \u201che is a little kid and doesn\u2019t know what he is talking about\u201d. That evening before I went to bed, my mother hugged me and whispered in my ear \u201cHow did she look like\u201d. I told her \u201cshe was very pretty and has a shining face\u201d. My mother kept silent for a while, and then I heard her talking to herself \u201cI wonder who she is?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years passed quickly, were full of war and distraction, so I forgot, or properly saying, overlooked the incident that happened during my childhood. The one thing that reminds me of it is a faint scar on my forehead. In the early 90s, my grandmother passed away and the inheritors sold the house, so we had to move to a new one. I was no more the only child and I had brothers and sisters later on. By the late 90s, I left Iraq and moved to a European country, I settled there and got married. My parents stayed in Bagdad and few years later my father passed away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every year or two, I used to visit my family in Bagdad and check on them. During my last visit, my mother asked me to go with her and visit her aunt. I have never met her aunt, because my mother and she had some troubles back then concerning heritage issues. My mother\u2019s aunt was an elderly woman; she was more than 90 years-old. She lived with her daughter and grandchildren in a modest house in one of the most old neighborhoods in Bagdad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was the opposite of what I thought. When I entered her house, I saw a tiny elderly woman who in a fine shape. I mean she was capable of easily walking and talking and she had a strong memory. She, her daughter and grandsons genially welcomed us and as usual the first conversation was about family circumstances; who got married, who died, who got children, who traveled and so on. I was too happy to meet family members that I have never met before. My mother\u2019s aunt told her daughter to bring the family album she was keeping in her room to recall memories. My mother and her aunt sat together flipping the album over and over and my mother asks her about some people in the pictures every once in a while. The pictures were so old as if they belong to Decius era! I was busy talking to the old woman\u2019s grandson; he was almost as old as me, so we talked about things that were happening in Iraq and so. My mother came to me with the album in her hand pointing to a timeworn picture saying \u201clook how elegant and classy your grandfather was when he was a youth\u201d. She was pointing at a \u201cgentleman\u201d wearing a chic suit and a hat. My mother showed me many picture of her family whom I never knew because of their inimical history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While my mother was flipping over the album, she pointed at one photo and said\u201d this is your grandmother, look how beautiful she was when she was young\u201d. I looked at the photo and I immediately felt like someone had just slapped me on the face! The woman in the picture was the one I saw when I passed out when I was young\u2026it\u2019s her! The pretty shinning young woman!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I finally knew who she was. She was my grandmother (my mother\u2019s mom) and I had never seen her before because she died when I was a baby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother noticed my confusion \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong my dear?\u201d she asked me. I said \u201cNothing at all. I\u2019m just surprised of how beautiful she was\u201d. My mother laughed and said \u201cWhence do you think our family inherited beauty?!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That evening, we went back home and I couldn\u2019t tell my mother, I thought that she wouldn\u2019t believe me. However, I decided to tell her the last day of my trip before I leave Iraq. So, we were watching TV, I took a deep breath and said \u201cMom! Do you remember the day I fell from the balcony and passed out?\u201d She moaned and said \u201cHow can I forget the day I have almost lost you?!\u201d I replied \u201cDo you remember what I told you about seeing a pretty young woman asking about you?\u201d She said \u201cI remember my dear, but I think it\u2019s your imagination, you were only 6\u201d. I knew she wouldn\u2019t believe me but I said again \u201cI swear to you mom! that pretty young woman I told you about once is my grandmother, the one you showed me in the picture\u201d She insisted on saying\u201d you were just a little kid, you are confused\u201d but I insisted as well \u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s her\u201d. She kept silent for a while then said \u201cMay God have mercy on her soul\u201d and not a single word after! I think she didn\u2019t believe me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I left Iraq the next day and unfortunately it was the last time I saw my mother. She had a heart attack two months later and passed away. Sadly, I was not able to catch the funeral because of very hard conditions. My soul was filled of sorrow and remorse that I used to wake up at night sobbing and calling for her. My wife and children were very concerned and advised me to see a psychologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One night, few weeks later to my mother\u2019s death, I slept early thinking of her and of my childhood memories. I was so sad and had tears in my eyes, I fell asleep and start dreaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I saw myself in my childhood house and I was standing at the courtyard, exactly where I fell when I was young. On my left was the same large charming garden and on my right was the house patio that extends to the main door. The place was the same as I saw it when I passed out once, it was so calm. Afterwards, I heard the voice of kid\u2019s laughter, I looked up and I saw them again! They were the flying cheerful children I saw once, but they didn\u2019t wave to me this time. While I was standing looking at them, the front door opened and two beautiful shining women came in. One of them was my mom! Yes she was my mother, she was young and pretty just as I remember her during my childhood. The other woman was my grandmother, the same woman I saw when I was young. They both were wearing white and where shining like the sun in midday! They looked like sisters and not a mother and a daughter! I wanted to run toward them but I couldn\u2019t as if I was fixed at my place. My grandmother stood at the door while my mother approached me with the most beautiful smile I have ever seen! I started to cry like a baby and shouted \u201cMom! Are you back?!\u201d I\u2019m so sorry mom\u2026I love you so much\u201d she kissed me on the cheek and softly said \u201cI know my darling. I love you too and I\u2019m not angry at you\u2026I\u2019m here to tell you this\u2026don\u2019t be sad my dear, I\u2019m at a beautiful place with the one I love; my mom, my dad and my brother Kamel \u2013who died when he was a child-\u201c. I eagerly said \u201chow is dad? Is he with you?\u201d She didn\u2019t answer me and kept saying \u201cDon\u2019t be sad my dear, I want you to stop crying\u201d. Then she kissed me once again on my cheek and turned to her mother who was standing by the door waving and smiling at me. I yelled \u201cmom! Please don\u2019t go\u2026will I see you again?\u201d She turned and said \u201csure you will my darling. We are all waiting for you\u2026we will meet someday\u2026stay good as you are now to your family and to others and you shall come to me my dear\u201d. Then, she held her mother\u2019s hand and both left the house while I stood alone crying and shouting \u201cmom! Please don\u2019t go! Mom\u2026I need my mom\u201d. While I was crying, I felt someone pushing my body so hard that I woke up to find myself in my bed! It was my wife and son sitting by my side; they were very anxious and worried. My wife said \u201cIhab! Ihab! Wake up! Are you okay? Why are you crying?\u201d My son brought me a cup of water and wiped the tears of my face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That dream was a sort of relief, my mom saved my life. Her warm heart saved me from sorrow and regret and showed the right path I should follow to reach eternal happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of you will wonder why it happened to me and not somebody else. In fact, I really don\u2019t know the reason, God knows. Maybe it has something to do with the incident that happened to me when I was young or maybe it is God\u2019s will; he chooses who see what others can\u2019t.\u00a0 I have read many stories on the internet of people with near-death experience, so I decided to write mine. Hopefully, my story changes people\u2019s life as it completely changed mine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have read many stories on the internet of people with near-death experience, so I decided to write mine. Hopefully, my story changes people\u2019s life as it completely changed mine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-reader-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabbos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}