HYDERABAD, June 27: When Abid Farooqui opened his eyes after what he thought was a long slumber, his first feeling was that he was in hell.

If there was a place called hell, then it had to be this, he thought. All around him in the dark room were fellow unfortunate souls some with faces charred beyond recognition, some with limbs missing and some with the expressions of a horrific end.

And at once to his shock, realisation came to him that he was indeed alive alive! and the others were dead. Farooqui had been one of the many victims of the Haj fire tragedy last April. He had been seriously burnt, and the Saudi authorities had put him down as dead and dumped him in this living hell hole.

And he was not the only one. For along with him, there were similar stirring of life in no less than 22 other bodies in the mortuary at the Al-Hira hospital. It was hell before death.

It took a long time for Farooqui to recover from the shock. He returned to India last month, still nursing horrific burns.

Recounting his experience from a city hospital bed here, he recalled that the Haj fire had broken out in tents belonging to Philippine Hajis, adjacent to the Indian tents. ``I reacted very swiftly and moved my mother to a safer place. At her instance, I ran into the burning tents to rescue as many pilgrims as possible.

I also carried former Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee president M A Aziz along with several others to safety but my efforts to rescue his wife proved futile,'' Farooqui recalled.

A tent, which was up in flames, collapsed on Farooqui resulting in severe burns and he fell unconscious. All around him hundreds of others were falling dead. It was death by the dozens. Presuming him to be one of those hundreds, the Saudi authorities dumped him in a truck and sent him to the mortuary.

``When I opened my eyes, I was shocked to find myself amidst hundreds of dead bodies. With great difficulty, I summoned enough strength to yell for help. Fortunately, the caretaker heard me,'' he said.

`'The caretaker, Hamed Siddqui, also a Hyderabadi, was horrified when he heard my voice from amidst the hundreds of bodies.I managed to convince that I was alive and that I was not a ghost,'' says Farooqui.

The caretaker immediately called the hospital authorities, who shifted Farooqui to a hospital bed. Farooqui's back-from-the-dead tale spurred the authorities to wonder whether there were others in the morgue who were alive. The process of searching for life in that hell hole took another 24 hours and yielded 21 reclaimed lives.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.