In May 2012, a man declared dead in Egypt stunned his family by coming back to life before his burial. What began as a tragedy quickly turned into a miraculous story that left an entire village speechless.
When 28-year-old Hamdi Hafez al-Nubi collapsed at work in the southern Egyptian village of Naga al-Simg in the southern province of Luxor, doctors pronounced him dead from an apparent heart attack. Devastated, his family brought his body home, washed it, and began preparing him for burial in accordance with Islamic tradition.
The imam was called, neighbors gathered, and the final prayers began. Just then, a village doctor arrived to sign the death certificate, but noticed the strange warmth of the body. On closer observation, the doctor discovered that he was still alive and broke the news to his mourning relatives. Upon realizing that she was about to wrap her living son in the burial shroud, al-Nubi’s mother was overwhelmed with emotion and fainted on the spot.
The doctor quickly checked the man’s pulse and found a faint heartbeat. He was then taken to the local hospital, where doctors confirmed that he had suffered a severe but nonfatal heart attack and that his vital signs had been so weak earlier that he had been mistaken for dead. After some efforts, both al-Nubi and his mother were awakened.
At first, the mourners froze in terror, thinking they had seen a ghost. But by the next day, al-Nubi was recovering and reportedly asked for food, still unaware that he had narrowly escaped burial alive. Villagers in Naga al-Simg, meanwhile, considered the event a gift from God, grateful that fate intervened just in time. It became the story of a lifetime, marking a rare day when a funeral turned into a feast, and a man was saved from being buried alive.
