It was the night before Eidul Azha and it was raining cats and dogs in Karachi. Power was out in the stretch around Falak Naz Centre near the airport on Shahrae Faisal, as often happens in many parts of the city when it rains. At around 3am, in the pitch darkness, 29-year-old Syed Haider Ali Shah was woken up by knocks on the door of his sixth-floor apartment. It was the building’s chowkidar, telling him water was flooding into the basement parking, endangering the sacrificial animals kept there.
There were 12 cows and 15 goats belonging to various residents tied in the basement. Worried, Haider woke up his cousin and his friends from apartments two floors below to help him, and headed downstairs. Another friend from the building across also joined them. The roads were flooded, with knee-high water on the road around their apartment block. In the pouring rain, while he was still contemplating what to do about the animals in the basement, he saw a white mini-SUV float across the flooded road, climb on to the traffic island and ram into a tree. Then the car just sat there, its headlights on, its engine running.
Haider and his friends thought the driver must be drunk. One of them began to record the events on his mobile phone.
A heroic real-life drama when five young men managed to save the lives of three people on a rainy night in Karachi
When no one emerged from the car, he and his friends tentatively approached the car, wading through the water to get to it. They were shocked to discover an elderly couple slumped in the back and the driver slumped in the front seat.
Despite calling out repeatedly to them, and the young men banging on the doors and windows, not one of the people inside stirred.
Seventy-one-year-old Mohsin Siddiqui and his 68-year-old wife Tabassum had landed in Karachi from a trip abroad at 2:30am. Mr Siddiqui, who works in the energy sector, had asked their driver Rafaqat Ali to pick them up from the airport, having dissuaded his brother’s granddaughter Zara from driving out to receive them in the middle of the night.
As they started out from the airport and turned on to Sharae Faisal, Mr Siddiqui says, it was coming down in sheets and he was alarmed to see water accumulated on the road almost coming up to his windows. He noticed also that water was seeping into the fairly new car. He told Rafaqat to gun the accelerator, otherwise the car would stall on the flooded road. That was the last thing Mr Siddiqui remembers. His head then slumped back and he fell unconscious.
Mrs Siddiqui, meanwhile, saw a man pushing his broken-down motorbike through the water with a child on it ahead of their car and told Rafaqat to watch out for them. That was the last she remembers. She too suddenly slumped on to the seat next to her husband.
A few moments later, Rafaqat too fell on his side, his foot still likely on the accelerator. The car kept moving until it climbed a traffic island, its right tyre burst and a tree blocked its onward movement.
Haider, his friends — Amir, Arshad and Zain — and Haider’s cousin Waqar were not sure what to make of the scene before them. In the darkness, and with bucketfuls of rain falling, they weren’t sure if the occupants of the still-running car were dead or what had happened to them. They tried opening the doors but they were locked from inside. They kept calling out ‘Uncle! Uncle!’ but nobody responded.
Someone suggested breaking the windows. But with the water lapping around their knees they couldn’t even find a stone to break the glass with. Then Haider remembered that a nearby repair shop used to put out its refrigerators on bricks. He ran to the shop, got a small brick from there and smashed a small triangular window in the back of the car. They still couldn’t reach the lock, so they then went and smashed a front window, which finally allowed them to access the central lock; they opened the doors and then shut off the car’s engine. The three occupants of the car seemed still to be breathing so the young men threw water on their faces. But while the driver and the lady showed some response, the elderly gentleman showed no movement whatsoever. The situation was fast turning dire.