5 minutes after he reached the high mountain top, after cheering and jumping in happiness, after shouting with the highest voice “I win”… “ I am at the top”… “I am the best”… he realized that there is no one to cheer him or applause him! There is no one to say congratulations or well done!
But where is everybody?
He looked down, and he found their bodies scattered down hill, and beside every one of them looms the story of how he pushed them, poked them, cut their ropes, took their food, or tricked them out of their oxygen supply to fuel his!
He was shaken out of the scene when a beep made him realize that his oxygen tank is only 5 minutes away from being fully consumed! He panicked when he calculated that the distance to the nearest safe point is 30 minutes!!!He looked around him, running or screaming will consume the oxygen faster… he screamed inside as loud as he could, a scream of sorrow!
Now he has 90 seconds more to remember all the opportunities he wasted to make friends in his way up, but he was afraid that one of those friends will make it up before him, and took the other choice every time; to get rid of them, and eventually all of them.
He had no more oxygen to even power his attempt to cry and weep.He wanted to say sorry, but it was too late.
As the last ten seconds ticked away, he completed the brief writing on the snow with a set of little stones in hope that they will read it beside his body: “Want top? Not alone!
”His body was the exclamation mark!—-Oh Allah almighty, give us the strength to walk with our beloved rather than to leave them behind… You are not the best if others are eating your dust, you are the best when you are to them “a must”!
Ahmed Abd ElSattar.
Finding Truth