It happened over 300 years in Holland

Stuck in the Desert by Saeed Al-Qamzi

Three years ago on the last day of January, I had a big problem. I can't forget this day forever. The story began when my uncle, my cousin, and I went to the desert. My uncle was the oldest at 72 years old, but he was still strong. My cousin at that time was 10 years old, and I was 25 years old. All of us liked hunting. Usually we went hunting on the weekend, especially in winter, because winter is the hunting season.

On the 25th of January, we decided to go hunting. All things were ready in the car, a Range Rover with four-wheel drive. We began on Thursday afternoon, and it took us three hours by car. We reached the place we were looking for at 5:15 P.M. First, we fixed the tent, then we made coffee and had a few minutes of rest. After that, we left to go on the hunt. We hunted using a falcon. Often, we hunt birds and rabbits. We spent two hours without finding anything. We decided to go back to the camp. On our way back, my cousin saw a rabbit. He cried, "Rabbit!! Rabbit! Quick!" I took the falcon's head cover and flung it off aggressively. When the rabbit saw the falcon, it ran fast, but my falcon was a professional hunter. He flew up and came down to trick the rabbit. After two minutes, the rabbit was caught. We took it and went back to the camp where we started to cook our dinner. We ate the delicious food, drank Arabic coffee, and sat around the fire talking until 10:30 P.M. Then we went to bed.

We left camp the next day at 7 o'clock in the morning. We went north and found two kinds of birds and caught them. However, we faced trouble at 10:00A.M. because the car got stuck in the sand! We spent about three hours trying to pull out the car without any progress. Finally, we decided to walk. I talked with my uncle about how hard it is for an old man or a young boy to walk more than 40 km. in the desert. He agreed with me. So I took a bottle of water with me and started to walk south alone. I knew the way well, but it was a long way in the sand. I walked more than four hours without stopping. I felt tired and thirsty. I drank all the water which was in the bottle. I stopped to rest, sleeping around two hours.

When I got up, darkness had covered the area. "What should I do?" I asked myself. I continued to walk south. I was worried about my uncle and cousin, and they were worried about me also. Suddenly, I met a Bedouin man who was riding his camel. He took me to his house. When I had had enough rest, I asked him to take me to the road and he did. After that, I found a car which took me to the city to get help. I had one day to get back to my uncle and cousin. When I got back to them, they were so happy because I had gotten help and they were able to see me again.

Eventually, I learned a lesson from this story, which was that the desert is very dangerous. Next time, when we go hunting, we must go in groups with two or more cars. If we go together, we can keep each other safe. We know the desert is dangerous, but we will never quit hunting.

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