III. King Cobra and a Mysterious Angel
by Bill Hunt
On my adventurous arrival in Pakistan as a young serviceman, I settled into a temporary stay at the white-walled hostel and headed right for the streets to see what I could see. From a mound on the outskirts of the City of Karachi, I watched the activities of a desert nomad encampment of Bedouins. The tribesmen, camels, donkeys, sheep, dogs, brown cloth tents, campfires, and shade overhangs were an intriguing sight that reminded me of Jacob and the twelve patriarchs.
In the streets of Karachi, I came upon three snake charmers stationed on the side of the road. Everything in Pakistan takes place on the side of the road. For instance, if a water buffalo or another animal falls on the roadside, it is immediately butchered and the meat hung up on poles to be sold. So, you have an instant, roadside meat market.
Being an avid photographer, I squatted down close with my movie camera near the snake charmers to get vivid pictures of the snakes, very close. These were not the rare giant king cobras, but the standard size, hooded cousins, considered one of the most deadly venomous snakes on earth. I assumed for snake charmers to work with king cobras the snakes must have been de-fanged. That assumption proved to be a major error that nearly cost me my life.
I moved in too close to the cobra swaying from the basket and the charmer with his flute. My face was not eight inches from the snake when he abruptly turned his black, sinister head toward me, hood open, eye-to-eye. The little crowd of Pakistanis, who had gathered around to watch, distinctly groaned, and I knew suddenly my assumption was dangerously mistaken.
I was face to face with a king cobra, and I have the film to prove it. I realized the snake was getting a little excited at my presence. In emergency prayer mode, I struggled to back off slowly and smoothly so as not to startle the snake to strike. I backed right through my now very serious case of doubly pronounced goose bumps. The snake charmer, himself, quickly capped the cobra back into the red straw basket. I noticed he, too, was trembling just as nervously as I was. That only increased my anxiety.
"Thank you, Jesus," I whispered as I stood up, "for delivering me away from that snake -- and death."
At that moment, a rather handsome Pakistani man, in about his thirties, approached me from the group and asked, "Are you married, Sahib?"
"Am I married! No!" I said, wondering what he wanted.
"Do you have a picture of your lady friend, right now?" he asked. So I reluctantly showed him a wallet portrait.
"This girl is not the girl you will marry," he stated. "No, the girl you will marry has brown hair like this one, but she is taller. In fact, you have already met her. Where does this one live?"
"On Long Island, New York," I said.
"The girl you will marry does not live there," he said. "She lives up further north."
"My parents live in Maine." I tried to test him by giving him misleading information.
"No, she is not from Maine," he said. "Where have you just come from?"
"I was in Upstate New York."
"Yes," he said, "she has brown hair. You have actually, already seen her. She lives there, way up, in Upstate New York, farther north. That is the woman you will marry, but not this one, Sahib.” I intentionally offered him some rupees to test him.
“No Sahib. Not rupees. I just wanted to tell you." I had no idea of who this man was, or whether I should consider anything he said. He did not seem ominous.
I looked down at the snake charmer and then raised my head again to look at the stranger. I turned to look for his face at everyone in the crowd of bystanders, but he was gone. He had vanished. There was no one in either direction along the road. Was he from God? Was he an angel? It was strange, and I was a stranger in a strange land. I wasn't sure how to judge what had just happened.
Two years later, I met the girl he described in the place he foretold. He spoke a true word. She would, indeed, become my wife. But that's another story.
(#3 True Story in series: Life is a 100 Million Miracles.)
Read more articles by BILL HUNT or search for articles on the same topic or others.
