The desert stretches with its dust and glare like a polished mirror placed in the eye of the sun to reflect its heat and loneliness. The car drives slowly and sometimes quickly up and down, sweeping the sand under its wheels, turning it into a whirlwind that haunts us like a ghost chasing an insignificant dwarf.

I still remember the newspaper headline and the picture, a large cage like the ones monkeys are put in, with a strange-looking person, with hair spread out like a desert bush and a scary and funny bushy beard, holding on to the bars and looking at nothing. The caption under the photo reads, "Caveman, caught by hunters during a trip in the desert."

That evening an officer from the Border Guard called us and asked us to send a jeep to pick up the caveman. It was an exciting idea for our directorate to investigate this case, so I insisted on participating myself to pick up the "caveman." It is a great thing to participate in this strange event, I can tell my friends about it for a lifetime so that they know how exciting and dangerous the life of security men is.

We arrived at the central "Border Guard" building late at night, our cars passed the checkpoints and parked in front of a large black iron gate with a soldier standing at the door with a machine gun.

I opened the gate and the cage was waiting for us, I got out of the front car and circled around the cage with the light of the flashlights flooding the site, I looked at the man trying to recognize his features, the man looked at me directly, he was small in body with a doubt that reduced his size to a quarter, wild hair mixed with white, and glassy eyes. I stood right in front of him and spoke to him, but he didn't answer, I waved my hand in front of his eyes, he didn't move, I shouted at him, to no avail.

I picked it up, opened it, read a little and then said, "Open this cage." The guards hesitated for a while and then slowly opened it. "Open this cage." The guards hesitated for a while and then opened it slowly. I reached out my hand and pulled the man, but he did not offer any resistance, he stood on his feet and turned left and right, then turned to the lights and looked at them and froze. I reached out my hand and dragged him to the car in which I was sitting, he smelled so bad that he was vomiting, I sat down and peeked at him as he stared at the lights all the way until we reached our station.

We dropped him off at the center and put him in a solitary cell and then went to the director's room:

• “ I want you to publish a picture of him in the local newspapers so that someone might recognize him."
• "Yes, sir."

The next day his photo was in all the local newspapers, with the caption, "Anyone who knows the owner of this photo is asked to contact the Capital Police Station immediately."

The days passed and the caveman did not eat at all except to drink a little water, his condition became worse day by day, the manager brought him in every day for investigation but not a single word came out of him, he was silent as a grave.

• "Sir, I have an idea." I said, "Why don't we shave his hair and make him take a shower so that people can't recognize him because his features have changed, and he smells so bad."
• "A reasonable idea. Good idea. Do it now."

After the bath and shave, the caveman became a human being like other people, with a thin mustache, gray hair, and bewildered eyes.

The caveman, as the press liked to call him, became the topic of the day, and there was no newspaper, magazine, council or diwan that did not deal with his story, and everyone was weaving stories about him. It seems that the photo that was published of him sparked the imagination of many, so the directorate began to receive dozens of phone calls. Dozens of people came to see him, staring at his face, asking him questions, but he did not raise his hand and did not answer, and I do not know whether they came to really recognize him or whether they came to see him like watching a rare animal in the zoo.

I felt sorry for him, so I ordered the cage to be opened, and he started running around the directorate yard and tried to climb the high fence, so we ran after him until we caught him and put him back in the cage.

• "I don't know what to do with him, he's not human, so why are we keeping him as an animal? " I said agitatedly.
• "We can call the hospital." One of them said, "And what will the hospital do for him?" I asked.
• - "They could examine him, or give him something to keep his strength up until we know who he is."
• - "Good idea." I agreed, and that evening the caveman was strapped to a bed at the government hospital and a group of doctors were examining him.
• - "How old is this man, doctor?" I asked.
• - "I'm not sure, at the end of sixty or maybe early seventy."
• - "You've got to be kidding. I thought he was. Maybe late forties or at the most, early fifties. early fifties."
• - "I don't know his exact age, but like I said, he's at least in his late sixties."

I looked at the man with wonder, and I marveled at his light body and gray hair, "How strange this man is! "

• "Doctor, does he have any illnesses? I mean. This man hasn't eaten in days."
• "No. Not at all. Not at all, on the contrary, I have never in my entire career seen a man of his age as healthy and strong. "
• –      "And the food, Dr., what do we do about not eating?"
• - "I don't know, all I know is that this man in front of me has no organic disease whatsoever. I suggest you show him to a psychiatrist. "

Soon a group of psychiatrists were surrounding the man, each with a palm on his chin, lost in a deep sea of thoughts.

• "So what exactly is this guy's story?" I asked, irritated by their silence.
• "This man has undoubtedly intact senses, he hears, sees and perceives, but he is in a state of self-isolation." Said their elder.
• –      "I completely agree, he must have had a terrible psychological crisis that made him retreat into himself, the tests you just gave him confirm that." Another said.
• - "But how long has he been like this?"
• - "We don't know exactly, but it seems like it wasn't a short time, maybe years or decades. "
• –      "But, uh. Does that mean he's crazy?"
• - "No, no, no. He just has a psychological condition. "
• - "And the food. What about the food?"
• - You should know that a person with this condition does not value anything material, which means that food is not important to him, all you have to do is put the food he is used to in his hands, and in the end I think he will eat when he feels like it. "

When we returned to the directorate in the evening, I ordered a room to be emptied of furniture and locked in and some fruit to be placed in front of him. The next morning, we hurried to go to him to make sure he had eaten. To our great surprise, we found some cores on the floor, and the whole directorate was talking about it, and even a daily newspaper called us to confirm the news.

Many people were trying to identify the caveman to make sure he was real and not a myth, and many people contacted us claiming to be the man's relatives and scheduled visits, but they all ended up denying any knowledge of him.

The story became too big for us to handle, and it started to cause us great embarrassment. Even big figures in the state called us to confirm the veracity of the story and the need to know the truth about the man as soon as possible, and even other security services came and investigated and promised to respond soon.

One Friday morning they called me from the directorate at home, "Come, it's urgent. . "When I arrived at the street where the directorate is located, I saw many private security personnel and military vehicles spread along the road, and when I reached the gate, I saw an officer waiting for me with a group of colleagues, and a crowd of men from other security services.

• "Quickly. . His Excellency the President is coming to inspect. " said the officer.

When the president left, he had emphasized the need to resolve the caveman issue as quickly as possible and to treat it as a national security issue, not leaving the press and opposition parties to exploit it and tarnish the image of the country and the government.

We redoubled our efforts on the subject, distributing papers with his photo to people, sticking them in public places, and publishing his photos in newspapers daily, and the caveman became our first and last concern.

Finally, we did not sleep at night and did not know the taste of food, and we were gripped by a frightening nervousness and excessive anxiety until our thinking could not get out of the prison of the caveman case, and any talk other than his case was intolerable blasphemy and unbearable ignorance, but we discovered over time that the excitement of the case gradually faded, and the press coverage gradually decreased, then disappeared from the front pages to internal pages, then became little mentioned, and then disappeared altogether.

Then one day, as we watched the caveman withering away, we thought, "We've got to do something." I shouted, "This man is dying on our hands, I won't take it upon myself, I'll call the manager. "

I picked up the phone and spoke to the manager:

"Sir, this guy is crazy, just an ordinary crazy I swear, there are thousands of him everywhere, believe me.

Yes, we have diagnosed him and the file will be on your honor's desk tomorrow morning.

No, no, he's dying.

I say we don't take responsibility for it.

Yes, there is a simple solution to rewind it back to when it was first found.

 The next morning we escorted the man to the Border Guard building and went out on a joint patrol, driving through the desert for many hours, and when we sat down to rest in the shade of a tree, when the dust had settled, the caveman had jumped out of the car and disappeared into the desert."