It was 2 o’clock at night. It was quiet and completely dark. People, tired from the day’s work, were in a deep sleep. Outside one house, a thief was sneaking around, trying to find a way into the house. Inside that house, Alia and her husband, Adnan, were sound asleep.

Suddenly, the sound of a thud woke Alia up; she quickly realised somebody had scaled the wall of their house and jumped into the courtyard.

“Wake up, wake up! Did you hear that?” Alia said to Adnan.

“Oh, come on! Go back to sleep; it’s probably the cat,” said Adnan, turning over to the other side.

“Listen! Someone is walking towards our room. I can hear the faint sound of their footsteps,” Alia said.

Now Adnan was also convinced that there really was someone in the house. He got up and peeked through a partially open door; there he saw a dark figure sneaking around.

“Oh, G... G... God,” said Adnan. He was sweating, and his face turned pale.

Alia was a quick thinker; she said to Adnan, “Don’t panic, I have a plan,” and explained her plan to Adnan.

The thief was now standing right next to their door. He was trying to figure out if anyone inside was awake.

Then the thief heard Alia talking angrily to her husband.

“I have never seen anyone as paranoid as you. You put all our jewellery in a bag and hung it in the tree in the courtyard. How are you going to live in this world if you are that afraid and paranoid? I’m losing sleep worrying about it, if someone found out the jewellery on the tree, we’d lose it all.”

Adnan spoke up, “Why don’t you go out there and announce to the whole world that the jewellery is on the tree? It’s supposed to be a secret, but you won’t stop talking about it. If someone stole it, don’t blame me; it’ll be your fault.”

Alia said, “I am telling you, tomorrow I’ll put the jewellery in a safe, like normal people.”

Adnan conceded, “Alright, alright, just go to sleep.”

Then they both got quiet. The thief waited for half an hour, and when he was sure they were both asleep, he quietly walked into the courtyard where the tree was. He looked up into the branches of the tree and got really excited because there was indeed a black bag hanging from a branch in the tree.

He climbed up into the tree, and when he reached the branch near the bag, he lunged at the bag in excitement and grabbed it with both hands. As soon as he grabbed the bag, his face contorted in a mix of shock and pain — the black bag was a beehive!

As the swarm of bees stung him all over, he fell from the tree and started frantically flailing his arms, running, barely controlling his screams; he went over the wall and ran into the streets of the neighbourhood. His screams woke people up, but he managed to escape.

The next day the incident was reported to the police and the thief was caught as police searched for a bee sting victim in the city’s hospitals. The neighbourhood was a buzzing with the story of the bumbling thief, and Alia and Adnan couldn’t help but laugh every time they thought of it.

Published in Dawn, Young World, November 30th, 2024