The closer I got to Qaleh Sorkh, the worse and more winding the road became. It was completely dark, and with no light except my headlights, I couldn’t even tell what lay a little beyond the road—whether it was a ravine or a flat stretch of forest.

I wasn’t listening to music anymore. All my attention was on the road.

The health worker had told me to bring another SIM card because my carrier didn’t provide service in that village. I had brought a spare SIM card with me. About twenty kilometers before Qaleh Sorkh, exactly as expected, my phone signal disappeared. I calmly switched to the other SIM while driving through the darkness as best I could.

For about half an hour I had not seen a single vehicle other than my own on those twists and turns. So even if stopping had been possible, I would not have stopped to change SIM cards. I simply didn’t dare.

I told myself how good it was that I had thought of everything. Otherwise, here I was, alone in this strange darkness, with no way to communicate.

Then the phone came back on, the new SIM registered, and it asked me for a PIN.

A PIN? Which PIN?

I had absolutely no idea what the damn PIN was. My regular SIM had never asked me for one, and the spare SIM—which I hadn’t used in ages—had a PIN I had completely forgotten.

It was unbelievable. There was no way I was going to get stuck over something this ridiculous. Not now, with only twenty kilometers left.

I had only three chances to enter the PIN, and in reality I had no idea what it was. After three wrong attempts, the SIM locked.

Now I was a little scared.

I had navigated the entire route with my phone’s GPS. Now, if I came to a fork in the road, I wouldn’t know which way to go. I slowed down as much as possible to give myself time to think.

I pulled myself together. It was fine. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any forks. And even if there were, sooner or later the road had to lead to some village. Once I reached the first settlement, if it wasn’t Qaleh Sorkh, I would ask someone for help and find my way there. Surely everyone there would know the health worker.

I accelerated again and continued.

I hadn’t gone much farther when my bad luck reached its peak. A broken tree had fallen across the narrow road, blocking it completely.

I froze.

I hadn’t turned on the heater because I wanted to minimize the chance of anything going wrong, and only then did I realize how cold it had become.

That was when I began to suspect that the universe had decided to teach me a strange lesson.

I didn’t have enough fuel to get back to the last town I had passed. I was trapped in the purest sense of the word—no way forward, no way back.

In that terrifying darkness, even if I had only gotten a flat tire, I wouldn’t have gotten out to change it, let alone now, when there was absolutely nothing I could do except wait for some kind of miracle.