"The Zionists captured me in '67, and I avenged them in October"... These were the sweetest words of Corporal Fighter Ahmed El-Sayed Hashish, one of the sons of the village of Mit Rabiea in Belbeis, Sharqia Governorate, who passed away just hours ago.

I met him in 2018, accompanied by journalist Hassan Essam El-Din, and asked him about the past. He said, "I participated in the Yemen War and saw many horrors there, and faced death several times, but God saved me. During my service in Sinai, the 1967 aggression occurred. During the withdrawal, we kept walking in the desert, myself and three of my colleagues, for three days without water or food. After we were close to death... one of the Sinai Bedouin men found us, saved us, and hid us in his house, providing us with water and food. Then we went out to try to return across the Suez Canal, but we were captured...

During the captivity, the Jews would give us one dry biscuit and one sip of water throughout the day to keep us alive until they could decide what to do with us. They asked us in Arabic to curse Gamal Abdel Nasser, but we all refused and said, 'Long live Abdel Nasser!' I considered myself a martyr for the sake of God... But then the surprise happened, as the international emergency forces came with ambulances to transport the wounded and some difficult cases under the supervision of the Israeli forces. God inspired one of my colleagues with a strange trick, where he cut a piece of cloth from his pants, slightly wounded himself, and stained the cloth with blood. I did the same as my colleague, and we pretended to be injured and started screaming and groaning. Then we mingled with our injured comrades, so the international emergency soldiers carried us, put us in ambulances, and we returned to Egypt after God granted us a new life.

After my return, I joined the artillery under the command of General El-Mahi, may God have mercy on him. On October 6th, 73 at 12 noon, the orders came to prepare for war in two hours, and although there was a fatwa for breaking the fast, none of us broke it, and we vowed to achieve victory or martyrdom while fasting. I was part of an artillery crew on the canal bank. At two o'clock in the afternoon, we were the first weapon to start the battle, launching tens of thousands of shells and bombs on the eastern bank. Then, within minutes, the aircraft flew over our heads to the other side, and Sinai turned into hell on the heads of the Israelis. We started jumping in the air with joy. Then I saw the paratroopers and infantry crossing the canal in rubber boats, and we all shouted, 'Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!' After a few hours, we crossed the canal and positioned ourselves on the eastern beach to protect the rear of our forces penetrating deep into Sinai. The happiest moment of my life was when I saw the bodies of thousands of Israelis torn and charred on the sands of Sinai and the Bar-Lev Line, which turned into heaps of dirt at our hands after we raised Egypt's flag over it. After the October War and the end of my military service, I was appointed as an employee in the Ministry of Education until I retired in 2000.

I asked him, "What do you wish for? Do you ask for an honor, treatment, or what?" He said, "I only ask God to have mercy on my comrades, the martyrs I avenged, and to have mercy on our martyr leader, Anwar Sadat." Just a few days before the month of Ramadan, Uncle Ahmed Abu Hashish passed away at the age of 83. May he be surrounded by mercy and contentment.