Fiction

Bhéwonom
Richard A. Bartle
72,000 words
2024

Bonus Matter: The Luckiest Man in the World

Summary

The Luckiest Man in the World

Report

‘Luckiest man in the world’ dies in freak accident

Cairo resident Bassam Masih’s good fortune finally runs out.

11 May 2024

Bassam Masih, a taxi driver in Cairo, had more lives than the proverbial cat. Born in Luxor in 1964, he was the youngest of five children. Almost immediately, a glimpse of what was to come occurred when a wiring fault in the hospital electrocuted his father while he was proudly holding the baby Bassam in his arms; the shock killed Mr Masih outright, but Bassam survived unscathed.

At age six, the young Bassam was playing with schoolfriends in the street when a driver of a tourist bus momentarily lost control and careered into the group. One child was seriously injured and three others needed extended hospital treatment, but Bassam was able to walk home as if nothing had happened.

In his early teens, Bassam attended his sister’s wedding at which there were fireworks. A wayward, powerful rocket exploded among the well-wishers, blinding one man and resulting in third-degree burns to three others and second-degree burns to a dozen more. Bassam, who was close to the centre of the blast, only suffered minor damage to his outfit (which the hire company generously overlooked).

One of Mr Masih’s most remarkable brushes with death occurred during his period of national service. Trained as a military driver, he was waiting in an M151 utility truck outside a command tent during a live-ammunition training exercise when a fellow conscript accidentally misfired a rocket-propelled grenade in his direction. It struck the unarmoured vehicle and blew it to pieces. Observers expected that Mr Masih must also have been blown to pieces, but instead the explosion threw him into the back of a passing aggregates truck and he was found two hours later at Gebel el-Silsila.

After leaving the army, Mr Masih moved to Cairo. Further close shaves followed. During the 1992 earthquake, his apartment building collapsed killing four people and injuring many more — but not Mr Masih. Two years later, he was visiting his aunt and uncle back in Luxor when devastating flash floods swept away their house, drowning his dog and leaving one of his cousins with concussion. On the flight back to Cairo, one of the windows of the Boeing 767 he was aboard was blown out during heavy turbulence, causing the passenger sitting next to Mr Masih to lose his glasses, false teeth and hearing aid.

In 2005, Mr Masih was on vacation in Sharm El Sheikh during the terrorist bomb attacks but slept through them. In 2008, his taxi was hit by a tractor, injuring his passenger but not Mr Masih himself. Three years later, at a visit to Giza zoo, he fought off an attack by an escaped Nile crocodile. Six months later, a swarm of bees invaded the café where he was having lunch, repeatedly stinging everyone present except Mr Masih. In 2018, he was one of only four customers of a food cart who didn’t suffer from food poisoning after eating contaminated liver (over a hundred other people were affected and needed treatment with antibiotics).

Out of luck

Unfortunately, Mr Masih’s extraordinarily charmed life ended on Wednesday, when a rooftop water tank broke free of its mountings and rolled off onto the street below just as Mr Masih was walking past after partaking of his morning coffee. He was killed instantly.

Some witnesses claim that they saw a white-haired man wearing a loose cotton suit looking from the roof moments after the event, but police were quick on the scene. Their investigation soon established that no-one matching this description was present in the building nor had exited it before their arrival. Mr Masih’s death was therefore declared to be an accident.

Mr Masih often quipped that he was either the luckiest man alive for avoiding tragedy or the unluckiest man alive for being subject to tragedy in the first place. It would seem that he now finally has his answer.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Notes

This report appeared on Al Jazeera’s English-language web site but not on those of other languages.

Where You Can Get it

Bhéwonom is available in print and Kindle format from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and other Amazon stores.
 

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