THE clock struck 11 in the night when Maryam moved towards her bed with a heavy heart and tears in her eyes. She lay down on her bed, curled up and tried to hide her face in the pillow. She felt hopeless, as if all happiness had swept away from her life.

Maryam was 14 and a student of grade nine, her father died when she was only nine years old and this was not the only pain she was going through. There was yet another test she had to pass through.

That day at noon, she and her Aunt Maria took her mother to the hospital as she was complaining about a piercing pain in her head. After a thorough examination by the doctor and going through the test reports, the doctor took Aunt Maria to a corner and told her the most unfortunate news, “She has brain tumour and that too at the advance stage. I am sorry, but we can’t do much.”

“But doctor, isn’t there any cure at this stage?” asked the aunt.

“The operation is too difficult to be carried out. Right now we can only start with the medication, if that helps we’ll think about an operation. Keep in mind that it is a terminal disease. In fact, I would not lie to you, there isn’t much hope. Still miracles do happen sometimes, even science cannot explain them,” replied the doctor.

This news came as a blow to Maryam who had already lost her father. And now it seemed that her world was coming to an end. She obviously could not do anything to save her mother, except pray to God. She and her aunt decided not to reveal anything to her mother, unless it was extremely necessary.

That night Maryam lay in her bed thinking, “A miracle, that’s what I need. Oh, please God, please. Protect my mother,” she prayed the whole night. At dawn she got up with hope, a new determination and a new life. She didn’t feel sad anymore. She wondered why nothing had changed apparently, but still she was hopeful!

Her aunt at the same time felt hopeless, but Maryam didn’t. The new day infused a new spirit in her. They had started the medication and every day Maryam prayed to God with firm belief that He’ll cure her mother. She took care of her mother more than she ever did. And amazingly, it seemed that the medicines were improving her mother’s condition with each passing day.

After one month, when the doctor examined her mother’s test reports, he was astonished to see the surprising improvement and said, “I think we should keep on treating her with medicines, they seem to have a good effect on her.”

So Maryam and Aunt Maria happily and hopefully took care of her mother. Days turned to weeks, weeks into months, Maryam’s mother was feeling perfectly alright. And after one year of treatment, the doctor checked her again. The doctor was stunned after seeing the test reports.

Collecting suitable words, he said, “It is unbelievable! It is a miracle! There isn’t any trace of tumour there. I have never seen this kind of progress in my life. Those medicines worked miraculously. She is probably one of the luckiest patients in the world.”

Maryam’s mother looked them in surprise (because she didn’t know she had tumour), listening to the miraculous news, Aunt Maria and Maryam jumped out of excitement and hugged mother.

The next day, when Maryam was reading the newspaper, she was completely taken aback to read the news. “Yesterday, the police raided a chemist’s shop owned by Mir Afzal Khan who has been arrested for selling expired drugs. According to Afzal, he used to erase the original printed expiry dates and stamp new dates of expiry. The shop was sealed immediately.”

She couldn’t believe what she read. This was the same shop from where Maryam used to purchase her mother’s medicines. This meant that her mother took expired drugs the whole year and yet she survived. When the doctor was informed about this, he was speechless. Whatever it was, it was a miracle.

Maryam went to her bed went to bed that night with a firm belief in the Mercy of God. She felt a breeze of happiness blowing in her heart and closed her eyes.

Even with all the advances in science and technology that man has made, yet the fact remains that science cannot explain everything, things which happen in reality and not just in fairy tales, we call them miracles.