Someone else said this was what happened to apostates, to those who betrayed Allah.

Someone said the fire would purify the land.

Their voices sounded distant, unreal, like I was hearing them through water.

I forced myself to focus.

I forced myself to pray.

Jesus, Jesus, please, I’m so afraid.

Please help me.

Please be with me.

But the fear kept overwhelming the prayer.

My thoughts were fragmenting, breaking apart under the weight of terror.

I thought about the times I had heard about martyrs in church history.

How they had faced death with courage and faith.

How some had even sung hymns as they died.

I had always admired those stories, had thought that if I ever faced persecution, I would be like them.

But I wasn’t.

I was just terrified.

I thought about Steven in the book of Acts, stoned to death for his faith, seeing Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

I prayed I would see Jesus, too.

I prayed the pain would end quickly.

I prayed for my family that they would be okay without me.

I prayed for my wife that she would find peace somehow.

I prayed for my children that they would grow up strong.

I prayed for my father that somehow someday he would understand.

And I prayed for the men standing around me preparing to kill me.

I prayed that they would come to know the Jesus I had found.

I prayed they would discover that same peace, that same truth.

Even now, even as they were about to burn me alive, I couldn’t hate them.

They thought they were serving God.

They were wrong, but they believed they were right, just like I had once believed.

And then I heard the sound that made my entire body go rigid with terror.

The sound of a match being struck.

It made a small scratching sound, then the hiss of it catching fire.

Such a tiny sound.

But I knew what it meant.

I saw the small flame in someone’s hand.

I saw him lower it toward the pit.

Someone said something.

I think it was a prayer.

I think they were asking Allah to accept this offering.

Then the man dropped the match.

For a split second, time seemed to stop.

I saw the little flame falling through the air, tumbling end over end, getting closer, and then it hit the gasoline soaked sand near me.

The fire came alive with a roar.

It wasn’t a normal fire.

Gasoline burns different.

It’s fast and hungry and hot.

The flames were blue and orange and they spread across the pit in an instant.

The heat hit me like a physical blow.

My clothes caught fire immediately.

I felt the flames touch my skin and the pain.

Oh god, the pain.

There are no words for that kind of pain.

It was beyond anything I had ever experienced or imagined.

It was like every nerve in my body was shrieking at once.

My skin was burning.

My flesh was burning.

I screamed.

I couldn’t help it.

The scream tore out of my throat, raw and animal.

I had never made a sound like that before.

I could smell my own flesh burning.

That’s a smell you can never forget.

Sweet and sickening and wrong.

The flames were spreading across my body.

My shirt was gone in seconds, just ash.

The fire was eating through my pants.

My skin was blistering and splitting and charring.

I couldn’t think.

I couldn’t pray.

There was only pain and fire and terror.

I thrashed against my bindings, but I couldn’t move.

I was tied too tightly.

All I could do was writhe in agony as I burned.

I remember thinking, “This is it.

This is how I die.

Please God, let it be over soon.

Please.

My screaming had become continuous.

I didn’t even realize I was doing it.

My body was just trying to express the agony, but there was no way to express it adequately.

The heat was unbearable.

The air itself seemed to be burning.

I couldn’t breathe without inhaling flame and smoke.

I was choking, coughing, still screaming.

I could hear the men talking, but their voices seemed very far away.

I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

Nothing existed except the fire and the pain.

This went on for what felt like an eternity, but was probably less than a minute.

A minute that contained more suffering than I had experienced in my entire life.

And then something >> happened.

I don’t know how to explain it.

I don’t know how to make you understand.

The fire didn’t go out.

Not yet.

But I felt something.

Someone in the midst of the flames, in the midst of the pain, I felt a presence with me.

It was as real as the fire, as real as the agony, as real as anything I had ever experienced.

More real, actually.

I felt arms around me, though I couldn’t see them.

I felt like I was being held, cradled, protected, not from the fire, but in the fire.

With me in the fire.

It was like I wasn’t alone anymore.

Like someone had stepped into the flames with me, the way Jesus stepped into the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Mach, and Abednego all those centuries ago.

The pain didn’t stop, but somehow, impossibly, it became bearable.

Not because it was less intense, but because I wasn’t carrying it alone.

And then I heard a voice, not with my ears, not a sound that traveled through the air.

Deeper than that in my soul, in that place where thought becomes knowing, where the deepest truths register, it said, “You are mine and I am with you”.

The voice was calm.

It was strong.

It was full of a love so vast and so personal that even through the pain and the fear, I felt it overwhelm me.

This was what I had been searching for my whole life.

this presence, this love, this certainty that I was known completely and loved anyway, that I belonged to someone who would never let me go.

And I knew it was Jesus.

He was there in the fire with me.

The same Jesus I had read about in secret.

The same Jesus I had prayed to in the darkness of my study.

The same Jesus I had confessed even when it meant losing everything.

He hadn’t abandoned me.

He was right there with me in the worst moment of my life.

I don’t know what happened next.

I can’t explain it.

The doctors I saw later couldn’t explain it either.

The fire went out.

Not slowly, not gradually.

It just stopped.

One moment I was burning, engulfed in flames.

The next moment the fire was gone.

I was still lying in the pit.

I was still tied up, but the flames were gone.

There was smoke rising from my clothes, from my skin, but no fire.

I could hear the men shouting.

They sounded shocked, confused, maybe frightened.

I heard someone say something about Allah’s judgment, about a sign.

I heard someone else say this wasn’t possible, that gasoline fires didn’t just go out.

I was still in terrible pain.

My skin felt like it was still burning even though the flames were gone.

Every breath hurt, moving hurt, existing hurt.

But I was alive.

I shouldn’t have been.

But I was.

The men were arguing now.

I could hear them clearly even though I couldn’t see them well.

My vision was blurred from smoke and tears and trauma.

One voice, young and shaking, said, “This was a sign from Allah”.

He said, “Maybe they were wrong.

Maybe they should let me go”.

Another voice, older and harder, said, “This changed nothing.

I was still an apostate.

I had still rejected Islam.

The fire going out didn’t change what I had done”.

A third voice, the one that had led them, spoke over the others.

He sounded uncertain for the first time.

He said they needed to leave.

Something had gone wrong.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

They needed to go before someone came.

Someone asked what they should do about me.

There was silence.

Then the leader said to leave me.

I was badly burnt.

I was tied up.

I was in the middle of the desert.

I would die out here anyway.

It was almost merciful, his logic.

Let the desert finish what the fire had started rather than trying again themselves.

I heard them getting into their vehicles, doors slamming, engines starting, and then they were gone.

The sound of their engines faded into the distance until there was only silence.

The men were arguing now.

I could hear them even though I couldn’t see them clearly.

My vision was blurry, maybe from the smoke and tears, maybe from the trauma my body had just endured.

Some of them sounded afraid.

The fire had just gone out on its own, and they didn’t understand it.

They had seen something they couldn’t explain.

One voice rose above the others.

It was the older man who had led this.

He was saying they needed to leave.

He was saying something had gone wrong.

He was saying they needed to go now.

I heard engines starting.

I heard vehicles moving.

The sound was getting farther away.

They were leaving me.

I lay there in the pit, bound and burned, listening to them drive away.

The sound of the engines faded into the distance, and then there was silence, just silence, and the vast empty desert and the stars overhead.

I was alone.

The pain was so intense I thought I might pass out.

Maybe I did for a little while.

Time became strange.

I would be aware, then not aware, then aware again.

At some point, I realized I needed to move.

I couldn’t just lie here.

I would die here if I didn’t get help.

The night was cold now that the fire was gone, and I was going into shock.

I tried to move, but the ropes held me tight.

Every movement sent fresh waves of agony through my burned skin.

I bit down on my lip to keep from screaming again.

I tasted blood.

I worked at the ropes.

My wrists were still tied to my ankles behind my back, but the fire had burned some of the rope.

It was weakened.

If I could just It took a long time.

I don’t know how long.

My hands were burned and clumsy.

The pain was making me dizzy and nauseous.

But I kept working at it.

Finally, the rope broke.

My hands came free.

Then I could untie my ankles.

Every movement was torture.

But I did it.

I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t hold me.

I collapsed back into the pit.

The sun was rough against my ruined skin.

I lay there for a moment, breathing hard, trying to gather strength.

I prayed.

I thanked Jesus for saving me from the fire.

I asked him to help me now.

I told him I couldn’t do this on my own.

And I felt that presence again, that assurance that I wasn’t alone.

I tried again to stand.

This time I made it to my knees.

Then using the side of the pit, I pulled myself up to standing.

The world spun.

I thought I would fall, but I stayed upright.

I could see tracks in the sand where the vehicles had been.

I could see which direction they had gone.

That was the way back to the city to help to survival.

But it was also the way toward the people who had tried to kill me.

If I went that way and they found me, they might try again.

I looked the other direction.

Just empty desert.

If I went that way, I would die of exposure.

I was injured, burned, in shock.

I wouldn’t last long out here.

I didn’t have a good option.

But I had to choose.

I started walking away from the city into the desert.

I don’t know why.

Maybe because I knew I couldn’t face my attackers again.

Maybe because I was delirious and wasn’t thinking clearly.

Maybe because God was leading me.

I just walked.

Each step was agony.

The burned skin on my legs cracked and bled with every movement.

My lungs achd from breathing smoke.

My whole body felt like it was still on fire, even though the actual flames were long gone.

The night desert is a strange place.

Beautiful and terrible at the same time.

The temperature drops dramatically once the sun goes down.

I had been burning minutes ago, and now I was shivering with cold.

The wind against my burned skin was like knives.

I was leaving a trail of blood in the sand.

I could see it in the starlight, dark spots marking where I had been.

I thought about how easy it would be to track me if they came looking, but I didn’t think they would.

They thought I had burned to death.

They thought they had left a corpse in that pit.

They didn’t know about the miracle.

They didn’t know the fire had gone out.

I walked for what felt like hours, but might have been less.

I had no sense of time.

The stars wheeled overhead.

The desert was silent except for my labored breathing and the soft sound of my feet in the sand.

My mind started playing tricks on me.

The pain and shock were making me delirious.

I saw things that weren’t there.

Shapes in the darkness.

Lights that disappeared when I looked directly at them.

At one point, I thought I heard my father’s voice calling my name.

I turned around, but there was no one there.

Just empty desert.

At another point, I thought I saw my children running toward me.

I reached out to them, but they vanished like smoke.

I was dying.

I knew I was dying.

The burns were severe.

I was losing blood.

I was going into shock.

My body was shutting down, but I kept walking.

I fell several times.

Each time it took longer to get back up.

Each time I wondered if this was it, if I would just lie here and die.

But each time I got up, I kept walking.

I was walking toward nothing.

There was nothing out here, just sand and stars and the cold night air.

But I kept walking because it was all I could do and because Jesus had saved me from the fire.

And I believed he hadn’t saved me just to let me die in the desert.

I don’t know how long I walked.

Eventually, I saw something in the distance.

Lights.

Maybe a road.

Maybe a building.

I couldn’t tell.

I changed direction heading toward the lights.

They seemed impossibly far away, but I kept going.

My vision was getting dark around the edges.

I was stumbling more than walking now.

My body was shutting down.

I saw the lights getting closer.

Or maybe I was getting closer to them.

It was hard to tell.

And then I saw a vehicle.

It was parked on the side of a road I hadn’t even realized I had reached.

There was someone next to it, looking at something under the hood.

I tried to call out, but my voice was barely a whisper.

I tried to wave, but I could barely lift my arm.

I took one more step toward the person and the vehicle.

And then my legs gave out completely.

I fell.

I hit the ground hard.

The impact sent shock waves of pain through every burnt nerve.

Sand stuck to my wounds.

I tried to push myself up, but my arms wouldn’t work anymore.

My body had nothing left.

I lay there on the side of the road, looking up at the stars.

They were still beautiful, still bright, still indifferent to human suffering.

I heard footsteps, running.

Someone had seen me fall.

A face appeared above me.

a man young with dark skin and wide shocked eyes.

He said something in a language I didn’t understand, not Arabic, maybe Tagalog or Hindi, one of the foreign workers.

He knelt beside me and I saw his expression change from shock to horror as he saw my burns in the light from his vehicle.

He was talking rapidly, maybe to me, maybe to someone else.

I couldn’t understand him and couldn’t respond.

My throat was too damaged from screaming as smoke.

But I saw him pull out a phone.

I saw him making a call.

I saw genuine concern and compassion on his face as he looked at me.

This stranger, this foreign worker who I would have barely noticed a year ago, was trying to save my life.

He took off his shirt and tried to cover me with it to keep me warm maybe or to protect my burns from the dirt and wind.

The fabric touching my skin hurt, but I couldn’t tell him.

I couldn’t speak.

I heard sirens in the distance, the ambulance was coming, or maybe the police.

I didn’t know which, and part of me didn’t care.

I was just so tired.

The man stayed with me.

He kept talking even though I couldn’t understand.

I think he was praying.

I think maybe he was a Christian.

I don’t know.

But his presence comforted me.

The last thing I remember thinking was, “Jesus, thank you.

You saved me.

You saved me.

Not just from the fire, but you sent this stranger to find me.

You brought the ambulance.

You orchestrated even this.

You haven’t abandoned me and the nothing.

I woke up in a hospital.

I didn’t know where I was at first.

I didn’t know how I had gotten there.

I didn’t know how much time had passed.

Everything was white and bright and clean.

So different from the dark desert, the fire, the sand, and blood.

I tried to move and immediately regretted it.

Pain shot through my entire body.

My skin felt like it was being pulled apart.

I made a sound, something between a gasp and a scream.

A nurse appeared beside my bed.

She was speaking to me, but I couldn’t focus on her words.

The pain was overwhelming everything else.

She did something, adjusted something, and slowly the pain became more manageable.

not gone but bearable.

I realized she had given me medication through the IV in my arm.

As the pain receded enough for me to think, I looked down at myself.

My arms were wrapped in bandages.

My chest was wrapped.

I could feel bandages on my legs, my back.

I was covered in them.

The nurse was explaining something about my burns, about the treatment, about how lucky I was to be alive.

I heard words like second degree and third degree and extensive damage.

I heard miracle, too.

She said it was a miracle I had survived.

She didn’t know how right she was.

I tried to ask questions, but my throat was so damaged I could barely make sounds.

The nurse understood and brought me water with a straw.

Even swallowing hurt, but the water was cool and I was so thirsty.

I managed to whisper, “How long”?

She told me I had been in the hospital for 3 days.

I had been unconscious for most of it.

They had kept me sedated while they treated the worst of the burns.

3 days.

It felt like both a moment and an eternity since I had been in that desert pit.

Over the next few days, as I drifted in and out of consciousness, I learned more about what had happened after I collapsed on the roadside.

The man who found me was a Filipino worker named Carlos.

He had stopped because his truck had overheated.

When he saw me fall, he had immediately called for help.

He had stayed with me until the ambulance arrived.

The medics who responded hadn’t known what to make of my burns.

They were severe, but not severe enough for how fresh they appeared to be.

They asked me what happened, but I was unconscious by then.

At the hospital, they had treated my burns as best they could.

They had cleaned the wounds, applied dressings, given me antibiotics and pain medication.

They had kept me stable while my body tried to heal from the trauma, but they were confused.

The pattern of my burns didn’t make sense.

They looked like fire burns, but they weren’t consistent with being in a building fire or a vehicle fire.

And why had I been out in the desert?

I couldn’t tell them the truth.

If I told them I had been burned for apostasy, for leaving Islam, they would have to report it.

And then the men who tried to kill me might come back to finish the job.

So I said I didn’t remember.

I said I had been attacked but couldn’t remember the details.

I implied I had been robbed maybe and left for dead.

The doctors seemed skeptical, but they didn’t push too hard.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »