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5

Zanub Khan

Professor Riddell

English 101

27 June 2017

Descriptive Narrative Essay

It takes one moment to change a person’s perspective about a situation in life. In this case, I was a victim of a situation in the homeland I call Pakistan. Lahore, Pakistan isn’t the best place to visit although visiting the homeland during my summer was always something I looked forward to. Enjoying my time with family and always having a blast. An event occurred last summer while I was visiting, making me doubt my decisions, and taught me a lesson that I will never forget. Perhaps that moment changed my life, and scarred me from wanting to ever visit again. A cowardly mistake, which could’ve cost us our lives.

One unusual night, around 1 am, my two cousins Ahmed and Zaid decided to go drinking. Back home drinking is considered illegal. In order to get alcohol you have to go through the black market. For those who may not know, black market is an illegal trade in officially controlled or scarce commodities. However, prior to that decision our parents told us specifically not to go out late at night without a driver. A driver in Pakistan is almost a norm in every household. The driver usually knowing his way around the cities, and carrying a gun for safety of his passengers. Being wreck-less thinkers, we snuck out one of the cars without the driver, and left for what we called a mission. This “mission” involved us going to a shady neighborhood to grab what we wanted and leave. Zaid drove the car, Ahmed was in the passenger seat, and I was in the back. As we were driving the vision of a road not paved, cows and goats tied up corner to corner. Houses made out of bricks and concrete. People drugged up, and out of all the places that happened to be the only place to get whatever kind of drug or drinking supply you wanted. At that moment unsettling thoughts came to me, thoughts of something that could get us in trouble or our parents finding out. Those thoughts were ignored, possibly because my assumption was that my cousins come here often to get their drinking fix. As I continue ignoring these thoughts they are looking for a house that they are unsure of, giving me that feeling of anxiety in my stomach that they really have no idea what they are doing. However, they finally got what they wanted and left. It was what happened after that threw us off our seats, as we would never imagine happening to us.

We were heading back home; Mind you this was a 30-minute drive from our house. We didn’t think much of it, but it happened to be that a car was following us. They pulled up next to the driver seat. About two guys in the car that leveled up to us, both covered with a cloth around their face. It was then where we all felt something bad was about to happen. The guy pulled out a gun and put it towards Zaids head. We all panicked! This wasn’t America where you call or text 911, and they come to your service. It wasn’t a place where they investigate until they get answers. It is a third world country, where we were stuck helplessly. So my cousin told us to duck down, we didn’t know what he was thinking but we followed his instruction. In a situation like that you would think maybe to stop the car because we were trapped anyways with a gun on one of our heads. He decided to duck the gun and gas the car as hard as he could. Ahmed and I were thinking, “Why did he decide to do that”, we were so numb to our brains that we were speechless. Sure enough they are right behind us going as fast as they can, and us going as fast as we can. Just when they would catch up to us we would grow a fear. This adrenaline is unspeakable of when they shot a fire. Till this day we do not know if they shooter shot at us or the sky to scare us.

My cousin, Zaid remembered there was a police checkpoint around that area we were in. So he rushed there as fast as he could while they were still following us. Getting away and not getting killed was what was on our minds at that time. Ahmed and I were still ducked down in fear that if we got back up to look back we would be shot. Zaid on the other hand was gassing the car as hard as he can to make it go as fast as possible. The car however, wasn’t any sort of sports car , it was a basic old Suzuki. We got to the police check point, and they happened to take a U-turn and rush away. We rush out the door and start explaining what happened and to go follow that car. Police on the other hand, not being cooperative or in any means really care about what we had to say. The corrupt police officer’s left us all in shock. Police over there only work for money. If you have money in your pocket to hand them, they will act accordingly. If you don’t have the money, like we didn’t at that moment, than they just tell you they are not of any help. No matter what the case was, they felt like we were a joke to them. We were feared that they might approach us again. But despite the corrupt police; for our satisfaction, we took a longer route through different police checkpoints. All of us in fear, not speaking a word to each other. But we knew that we would tell no one of what happened.

As we reached home, we started discussing, and the first words that came out was “Did that really just happen?” said Zaid. We all look at each other in disbelief because we only hear or see these situations in movies and books. We weren’t thinking straight that whole time, we never thought that one little mistake of the car’s tire going out, or not going fast enough could’ve got us in more trouble with the guys than maybe cooperating with them when they had the gun pointed to us. Ahmed and I walk out the car in the driveway and we can’t help but shake and barely walk from this utter shock that came to out body. To think that this happened to us and the way we handled it blew our minds. From that day forward we avoided going out as much and when we did we stayed mentally prepared with our driver and our parent’s. Although one day Ahmed decided to tell his parent because he felt he couldn’t keep it in. The parent’s eventually told the other parents and so on. We got lectures and a sense of “What were you guys thinking?” or “Why did you not listen to us?” lecture.

Why didn’t we listen to them? We felt invincible and like nothing could possibly happen. We felt like we did this often back home so why not do a quick little trip. We learned to always listen to what your elders have to say because it may be of experience or knowledge. We still thought if we couldn’t get away what would’ve happened. We would’ve been dead and non-existent just because we didn’t know any better. Because of a small bad decision it was going to cost us our life. The little thrills in life can be dangerous, and possibly not even worth it. That day on we were aware of our surroundings no matter where we were. It changed our lives in a way that we would not act stupid or wreck less. We would think about scenarios to make sure that we were always prepared for a just in case. It was a memory that remained so descriptive.