Saudi bus tragedy: How sleeplessness saved an Umrah pilgrim’s life

Dubai: Twenty-four-year-old Mohammad Abdul Shoeb could not sleep during the late-night journey from Mecca to Madinah.

Everyone else — 45 fellow pilgrims — had drifted into deep slumber. Unable to rest, Shoeb quietly moved to the front seat beside the driver, perhaps to chat, stay awake and pass time.

What Shoeb didn’t know was that this small decision would become a life-saving twist of fate.

Moments later, a speeding diesel tanker rammed into the bus, triggering a massive fire that engulfed the vehicle within seconds.

The impact jolted Shoeb and the driver, both still awake. Acting on instinct, they leapt out through the window, barely escaping as the bus turned into a fireball, trapping everyone else inside.

Inside the vehicle, no one even had time to open their eyes — let alone run.

“He called us at around 5:30am, saying he survived but everyone else was burning. We couldn’t speak to him again after that — later we heard he had been hospitalised,” said Mohammed Tehseen, a relative waiting anxiously at Hyderabad’s Haj House, Nampally.

Shoeb did not just witness a tragedy — he lived through a nightmare. His parents, Mohammed Khadeer (56) and Ghousiya Begum (46), were among the victims. His brother, Mohammed Abdul Sameer, survived only because he stayed back in Mecca, unknowingly avoiding his own death.

Shoeb, a private-sector employee from Natarajnagar, Jhirra, travelled to Saudi Arabia with six family members, including his grandfather and cousins. None of them returned.

He is currently being treated in the ICU of a German hospital in Madinah, recovering from the physical and emotional shock of losing nearly everyone dear to him — in a single night.