Educationist Engin Baştürk wrote about the interesting events he experienced during a parent visit he made during Ramadan while he was working in Quetta. He narrated how they got rid of a danger by taking hitchhiker students in their car.

It was in the month of Ramadan. We were to have an iftar and dinner with a family as part of our parent visits. Before we set off in our car, we checked our preparations. I asked Abdullah, our technician at the school, to check the coolant in the radiator. After a while, when I asked, he said, “The car is ready, sir.”

I and my three students set off in my car from Quetta to Qila Saifullah. This journey, which normally took three hours, would take five hours due to pockmarked roads. On the way to Qila Saifullah, we saw three boys by the roadside and we guessed from their uniforms they were students. They waved at us to hitchhike. Our friends in Quetta had always told us “Never take anyone in your car while travelling!” It was much dangerous to do that in Balochistan.

When I stopped, I noticed the car was overheated

We stopped and asked where they wanted to go because the boys were in student uniforms. One student translated the hitchhiking boys lived somewhere 15 kilometres down the road. I said, “They’re welcome then. Let’s go together.”

After about 15 kilometres, we arrived at the young hitchhikers’ house, which took an additional 5 minutes’ drive from the main road. When I stopped near their doorstep, I noticed the car was overheated with almost no water in the radiator. It turned out that our technician Abdullah had forgotten to fasten the radiator cap. When the water in the radiator boiled, it all overflowed. The three hitchhiking students said, “Don’t worry, we’ll bring you water from home,” and rushed. Ten minutes later they came back with a bucket of water. The water they brought saved our car. The radiator cap had not fallen, it was stuck somewhere in the engine.

Allah saved us because we helped the students!

We closed the hood of the car and drove on. I understood and believed that my car was saved and we were not stranded on the road thanks to the prayers of those schoolchildren we had saved from walking under the sun in Ramadan. Since we helped those students, Allah helped us and we were saved from being stranded.

After dropping the hitchhiking children off at home, we continued on our journey. After a while, an old uncle waved at us on the road. We took him on board with the joy that our car had not overheated and we had not been stranded on the road. There was no petrol left in the tank and we were driving on CNG. Normally, I could travel 120 kilometres on a full CNG tank. Even though we had travelled nearly 160 kilometres that day, the CNG was not finished. We interpreted this as a blessing from Allah, as we took that uncle in our car. It was very difficult to find a fuel station on the highway. We had run out of gas just as we stopped by to get fuel at a station.