The Hour of Fate
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A Short Story
By Omaima Abdelaziz
Youssef had been able to see the future since he was a little boy.
Quick visions. Mysterious flashes. They did not come when he wanted them to. They came when they chose to.
One morning, years later, still living with the same strange gift, he woke up terrified. In his sleep, he had seen a scene with perfect clarity: his car burning, glass flying everywhere, and the watch his mother had given him lying among the wreckage, its hands frozen at twelve-oh-three.
Youssef decided never to drive his car again. He used the train, taxis, and his own feet. After a few weeks, he began to feel safe.
But the vision returned a month later. Then again a week after that. Then it started haunting him every night. He would scream in his sleep, and his wife would wake up shaken by the terror in his voice.
Youssef thought, “Maybe the accident is not my fault. Maybe I am riding in someone else’s car.”
So he stopped getting into cars altogether. Even taxis became forbidden. He walked long distances and turned down invitations from friends whenever reaching them required a car ride. They laughed at him and called him obsessive, but he did not care. Life was more precious than pride.
A year passed. No accident happened. Youssef began to believe the danger had disappeared.
“Maybe the future has changed,” he whispered to himself as he drank coffee on the balcony of his apartment.
He decided to celebrate his birthday at home. He invited his friends, bought a cake, and dressed his little daughter in her red dress.
At eleven fifty-four, he stood on the balcony, looking out at the city lights he loved so much. He felt calm, reassured, almost happy that he had defeated fate.
Three minutes before midnight, he heard a thunderous sound.
A truck crossing the nearby bridge had lost control. The driver had been speeding, and the road was slick from a light rain.
The truck crashed through the concrete barrier of the bridge, rose into the air for one impossible moment, then fell...
Not onto the street.
Onto the balcony where Youssef was standing.
Everything ended in a flash of light and dust.
There, among the wreckage of the truck and the shattered balcony railing, rescue workers found Youssef. He was lying on his back, staring motionless at the sky.
Beside him, his old watch lay among the broken glass, its hands frozen at twelve-oh-three.
Exactly as he had seen one full year before.
The car he had seen in his vision had not been his car. Nor had it been one of his friends’ cars. It was a truck coming toward him from the bridge.
And he had been riding...
His balcony.
