Friend remembers last moments in lightning

FUJAIRAH // In the world of tweets, Afayef Al Hadadi had been pronounced dead.

But as she sat in a Fujairah Hospital bed yesterday, with bandages on the right side of her head and along her right arm, she was seething over inaccurate reports about the lightning strike that took the life of her close friend, Sabha Al Mehrzi, 19.

"They said I died! But here I am!" she said.

Afayef, 22, survived a freak accident on Wednesday when lightning killed her friend in front of her.

"It is all false. Sabha was not standing taking photos of the storm with her mobile phone," she said. "Neither me nor her were carrying our phones. We just had our wallets because we were heading out to the canteen via the parking lot."

Afayef said she was upset people were trying to "turn the story" around, as if somehow Sabha had made a mistake.

"She wasn't carrying anything electrical," she said. "Stop speculating and making judgements. Leave us in peace."

With great difficulty, and support from her two sisters who were sitting with her and holding her hand, Afayef relived the "most horrible scene of my life".

Sabha and she were foundation students at the Fujairah Women's College. It was about 3pm on Wednesday, they had just finished class and it was raining.

Wanting a brisk walk in the rain, the two girls headed out to the faculty parking lot for the canteen.

At some point Sabha turned around and was walking backwards, facing Afayef and teasing her.

But then Sabha said: "You know I love you, right?"

It was the last thing Afayef remembered hearing before she felt something "heavy" on her right side, then found herself down on her stomach.

"It was like a flash but it was so powerful. It knocked me down," she said, adding that she hit her head on the walkway near a parking spot. She said she fainted for what felt like a few seconds before "water entering" her ear woke her up.

"I saw Sabha laying on her back. Her eyes open, unmoving. Staring out. I called out to her. Then I crawled over to her and saw it," Afayef said, breaking down.

"There was something dark around her neck," she said weeping.

"I knew she was dead. I could feel it. There was like a smell, I don't know. I was yelling out, 'Help! Help! Sabha is dead! Teacher! Teacher!"

Afayef said she remembered being taken inside by college staff, then students cleaning the blood from her face. She vomited and was dizzy. She was aware of what was happening around her, including the panic, but it all felt like "slow motion."

She recalled hearing a man's voice. It kept yelling at her.

"He was so annoying," Afayef said. "He kept asking me if I can hear him and if I know I am inside an ambulance. I wanted to yell back to be quiet. But instead I just said, 'Yes, yes. I know I am inside an ambulance'."

Everything was a blur that first night. There were a couple of hours of questioning by police and officials over the incident. "They kept asking me the same questions," Afayef said. "I kept repeating the story over and over, and feeling great pain each time. They were here from 4.00 to 10.00 at night. Back and forth. Asking me if I remember anything new.

Afayefi was discharged from the hospital at 1pm on Thursday. She said she was not afraid to return to the campus.

"I will pray and remember Sabha every day, and I will go back and continue what we started for her sake," she said. "I am not a quitter. She wasn't a quitter. She wouldn't have liked it if she knew I stopped going to college because of this."

She added: "Allah yarhamek Sabha:" "May Allah have mercy on you, Sabha."

rghazal@thenational.ae