“How much time will you take to get ready? Isn’t it enough?” I said to my sisters, putting on an expression of feigned impatience. They pushed me away and shut the door.

On a frosty winter day in December, my family was preparing for my aunt’s engagement. I didn’t want to join them, so I made up my mind to stay at home. The house was in a flurry as everyone scrambled to get ready.

I was sitting in a corner, cheerfully watching TV. In a flash, my papa stepped in front of me, blocking the TV.

“Aren’t you want to come? What will you do here?” he asked.

“Papa! What will I do there? My friends aren’t coming, I’ll be bored. I’m perfectly fine here,” I explained.

“Okay, I’ll try to come early, your mother and sisters are staying there tonight. So until then, don’t touch the electric boards and don’t make the house dirty, okay?” he instructed. I nodded.

When they were leaving, Papa called out, “Junaid, mark my words.” I nodded again and shut the door.

I climbed onto the sofa and started watching TV. After an hour, or maybe less, there was a power outage.

“Oh no!” I yelled in dismay. When I looked out of the window, I noticed that electricity was everywhere except in my home. I went to the main board and saw that everything looked fine. I flipped a few switches, but nothing changed.

I didn’t know much about fixing electrical issues, but I kept trying. I began searching for the pliers, but they were nowhere to be found. I finally found them in the kitchen cabinet, but they were quite rusty.

“My sisters must have used them to hold a hot pan,” I thought.

I headed to the top of the storeroom. I observed that the wires were tightly fastened, but were in poor condition. A couple of days earlier, I had seen my papa, who was an engineer, cutting wires and reconnecting them, so I cautiously cut the insulation and attached the stranded ground wires.

I rushed to the main board and flipped a few switches, but, as before, nothing changed. Frustrated, I grabbed my phone and called my papa, explaining the electricity issue.

“Don’t touch the electric board. Don’t try to fix anything. I’ll be there soon,” Papa instructed strictly.

I put my phone away as its battery was low and then it died.

“This is crazy!” I whispered in frustration before yelling in a burst of anger.

After much thought, I decided to fix the electricity issue myself. I stepped into the storeroom with the pliers. Carefully, I cut the wires and tried to reconnect them by twisting them together with the pliers.

As I was about to twist the wires, a powerful electric current surged through me.

“Ahh…!” I screamed in fear as I rapidly pulled my hand back and flung the pliers away. My heart pounded wildly, matching the violent tremors in my body.

Determined, I quickly grabbed the pliers again and tried to reconnect the wires. But this time, I accidentally touched the exposed wire. The electric current gripped me for what felt like five minutes, before forcefully pushing me away. I fell to the floor, my entire body trembling uncontrollably. My vision blurred, and then my eyes slowly closed. I fainted.

Sometime later, my family returned home. As they stepped inside the house, they noticed the smell of something burning and then saw a burning wire. Panicked, my sisters rushed to the check the different rooms of the house and found me unconscious in the storeroom next to the main electric board.

“Junaid!” they screamed in terror.

My papa urgently grabbed bucket, filled it with sand from outside the house and doused the flames with it, because electricity fire is always put off with sand.

Afterward, they rushed me to the hospital. As I slowly opened my eyes, the first word that escaped my lips was, “Papa, I am sorry! I should have listened to you.”

Papa gently squeezed my hands and said, “Everyone makes mistakes, son. It’s okay. I forgive you.”

But I couldn’t stop regretting it. My left hand was badly injured and didn’t function properly for a week. However, with Papa’s careful support, I gradually recovered and regained full movement within days.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 12th, 2025