Office employee Hanan Mohammad Abdelrahman had never thought it possible to lose a huge sum of money sent to her from her cousin working abroad to help his family buy a home.
Hanan said in a Sudanow interview that after cashing the sum in Sudanese pounds, she took the money secured to her by the office treasurer in a plastic bag covered by a sports newspaper and went out to look for a means of transport to take her to Haj Yousif Neighborhood where she and her cousin’s family lived.
In order to avoid any problems, she thought it better to take a taxi with other passengers.
Arriving near to her home, she dropped from the taxi, forgetting the money behind in the car.
When she got inside her home, to her shock she realized that she had lost the money and started a crazy search. Without saying anything to her family she returned to the taxi terminal, looking at faces of the taxi drivers queuing for passengers. But nobody could help her find the man she was looking for. She did not know his name or the car number. She was like someone looking for a needle in a heap of straw. Night fell and the fatigued, desperate and tearful woman had to go back home. The sum was huge at the time (the equivalent of $59000) and she thought that nobody would believe that she had left it behind in the taxi in that way. She had wasted hard won money collected by her cousin over long years of hard work.
Back home there was a surprise waiting for her. In the house yard she found the newspaper the foreign exchange treasurer had wrapped the sum in. It was the same paper with the same headline that carried news about the victory of one of the city’s leading football teams over another of the city’s football giants. It was the same headline that attracted the attention of the taxi driver when she was about to get into his car. She remembered that the taxi driver had commented on the paper headline. It was that headline that lead the honest taxi driver to identify the woman who left the money behind in his car when she reached her place.
But how could the conscientious man find her home though she had dropped from his car on the main road and vanished from his sight?
The driver’s version of the story was that when the young woman left the car he hurried back home to take his sick father to the doctor. Looking into the vehicle, he noticed the newspaper on the back seat. Taking it he found the money and tried to remember where he had seen that headline. He remembered the woman when she was about to get in his car and remembered the football match result headline. Then little by little he could remember where the woman had dropped from his car. Yes, she left the car beside a grocery run by a man who was talking to a woman in Nubian language. Being a Nubian himself, the taxi driver understood what the two were saying and laughed. Before he would leave the place he read the shop signboard. He also remembered that before the female passenger would head towards her home she greeted the woman.
He immediately rushed to the place, stopped by the grocery and asked the owner where he could find the young woman who dropped from his taxi some time ago. The grocer laughed, telling him that there were so many young ladies living in the area. “What is her name?”, asked the grocer and some people who gathered around.
Here the taxi driver asked the grocer to take him to the woman who happened to be talking to him in Nubian. And the man remembered her and asked a boy in the crowd to go to the woman’s home and call her to the shop. The woman came and the driver asked her if she remembered the young woman who dropped from his car and greeted her before she headed to her home. And the woman remembered her but said she lived far away from where she left the taxi. But she remembered her name “Hanan Mohammad Abdelrahman” and said she had made acquaintance with her at a wedding party one day. A young man standing by quickly told them he knew Hanan and her brother ‘Ammar’ who happened to be a colleague of his. He said he knew Hanan’s home and readily took the driver there. They knocked at the door and asked about Hanan. The reply her father gave them was that she entered the house and very soon went out in a hurry. The driver told him about the money left behind by his daughter in his car. The old man said his daughter does not own such a big sum of money. After a long debate the old man was convinced to keep the money until when his daughter would come back. He kept the money in his own safe after removing the newspaper and dropping it in the house yard.
Once she saw the newspaper upon entering her home Hanan fell unconscious. Regaining her senses, Hanan heard her father ask her where she got that big sum of money. Here she became sure that the money was back. What a miracle?