On the morning of July 30, a call came from Kuwait to Bikash Tamang’s mobile phone in Kathmandu. The caller asked, “Are you Bikash? Is Som Kumar Tamang your relative?” As soon as Bikash said yes, the next sentence from the other end left him stunned.
“The vehicle he was riding in was hit in a drone attack, and he died,” the caller said.
For a few moments, Bikash couldn’t believe it. When he checked Som’s phone, he realised that a friend who worked with Som had tried to reach the number saved as “Bikash Bhatij” (nephew Bikash).
That call marked the beginning of an agonising wait for the family. Bikash immediately called relative Tika Tamang, who was in Itahari at the time. At first, no one could easily accept the news of the death.
Tika contacted people in Kuwait to verify the truth of the incident, and reached out to the manpower agency that had sent Som to Kuwait. Only then was Som’s death confirmed for Tika as well.
“I asked them to contact Kuwait again, to find out which manpower agency he had gone through, and to confirm with the embassy,” Tika told Onlinekhabar. “It was only after verifying everything repeatedly that we learned it was true.”
Only after that was the news gradually passed on to family members and relatives. In 2022, Som, from Ratuwamai Municipality-9 in Morang, had gone to Kuwait carrying the dream of improving his family’s financial situation. Now he had returned to his own village, but as a corpse in a coffin.
The 44-year-old Som died on the morning of July 30 in a drone strike carried out by Iran. He had gone to Kuwait to work as a driver, and the attack struck while he was in his vehicle. The Nepali Embassy in Kuwait stated that he died on the spot.
Som’s body was sent to Nepal on Saturday. It arrived in Kathmandu on Sunday afternoon and was taken straight to his home in Morang, where the last rites were performed the same day.
His body was brought home on Sunday afternoon. As it lay in the courtyard, family members broke down in tears. His 92-year-old, frail father tried to touch his son’s face one last time. His wife’s weeping would not stop. His two children stared in silence at the father who would never return.
Soon after the body reached the village, the family carried it to the river for the cremation. Rain continued to pour from the sky throughout.
“It was pouring heavily as we carried the body to the river for the cremation; we performed the last rites in the rain,” Tika said.
The family includes his 92-year-old father, his wife, two children, an elder brother and sister-in-law, and an elderly aunt. His mother had passed away a few years earlier.
According to Tika, before going abroad for work, Som had been a professional driver in Nepal. For years he drove a Toyota Hiace on the roads of Kathmandu, Morang, and Jhapa, before choosing to go to Kuwait in hopes of better earnings. There too, he worked as a driver.
He had flown to Kuwait carrying the dream of brightening his family’s future and becoming a support for his 92-year-old father in his old age.
In Kuwait, he drove for a living. But as fate would have it, a fatal drone strike destroyed not just his vehicle, but the trust and security of an entire family.
A driver who had gone abroad carrying the dream of a brighter future for his family finally returned to his own village, but this time, he was welcomed not with smiles, but with his family’s tears, flowing beside a coffin holding his body.
For his household, Som was not just one person; he was the pillar who fulfilled all their needs and brought them happiness. Having travelled thousands of kilometres from behind the wheel, Som himself likely never imagined that his own life’s journey would end so abruptly, midway.
“Who will now make up for his absence in this household?” Tika said. “There’s a 92-year-old father at home, a frail aunt, young children; a huge thunderbolt has struck this family.”
