When I was 15, there was no way I would've imagined life would be this interesting by the time I became 25.
Just yesterday, after a weekend visiting my family in Riyadh and a dose of the always-expected, yet consistently-surprising-in-
It was a day in mid-November. The weather was good by the standards here. It was cloudy, raining on and off, cool-ish temperatures etc. A good break from the 40+ degrees Celsius weather.
I was 2 hours into my 5 hour drive, cruising at a 120 km/h speed. It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon, an hour away from sunset. The weather was aight. On my right, there were multiple clouds on which the reflection of sunlight made for a breathtaking scene.
Like your typical Saudi, I wanted to take a picture, but I wasn't gonna stop to do that. So I switched to the slow-moving lane, drove at about 100 km/h and pulled out my phone which I was playing music from on the car's sound system via Bluetooth. Just braggin'.
I launched the phone's camera app and tried to take a picture. "What the fuck is this?" I thought.
"This see-though window is blocking my view."
I pulled the window down so my view was not obstructed, you know, because the photo was so important and all.
I held my phone an inch away outside the body of the car and angled it so I can take that perfect shot. It was quite windy.
Suddenly, the phone escaped my hand!
It was a few seconds before my brain could process this. I pulled over. The sound of the music that was playing from the phone stopped. It was dead silent. That seemed appropriate. There are no soundtracks in real life.
Like most people who suffer from an emotional over-attachement to their phones, I thought, "I physically and desperately need my phone."
I put my car in reverse, backed up on the side of the road very slowly and carefully about a couple of hundred meters and started driving forward until I found it on the side of the road.
The front and back were severely broken but it's still in one piece! I pressed the unlock key and the screen light came on. Colors are good. I could see Whatsapp notifications coming in. What a tough son of a bitch! I tried touching the broken screen to see if it was still working but it wasn't. I'm one hopeful motherfucker.
I don't know if it is my twisted sense of humor or if I'm just crazy but I started laughing hysterically on the side of the road. This is too stupid to ever really happen. This is fucked up. This totally sounds like something I would make up.
I got back in the car and the sound of music came on via Bluetooth. That sterdy bastard! I realized I could navigate the music list and make calls from the car screen. "I'm not totally stranded in my perfectly good car on this quite busy highway on its most busy day of the week," I thought, something that would've been the norm 10 years ago.
I got back on the road and it felt awkward between me and the phone. It still worked despite being dropped from a moving car at a 100 km/h while I was not able to 'not throw it out' of the window on the highway. This is why we can't have nice things.
I stopped at my brother's apartment in Dammam, which is one hour away from Jubail and on the way there. I asked him if he had a spare phone. He asked me "Why? What happened to your phone?"
"I dropped it and the touch screen is not working" I told him.
He asked me to look at it. I showed him the phone and he stared at me for around 10 seconds in pure shock.
I told him the story and we laughed and laughed and laughed. It felt like one of those Sopranos scenes where one guy is beat up by the mob and someone asks him "What happened to you?" in a New Jersey accent and they guy goes, "I fell down the staiys."
Anyway, I feel a need to go all inspirational on you now that I'm getting near the end here.
Those couple of seconds when I had the phone and then didn't reminded me of how fragile life is and of our false sense that we're always in control. We really aren't, so plan accordingly, bitches.
Post that picture ...
ردحذفI never took it :(
حذف