Staring death in the face changes everything. How you think, how you view life, how you actually live. Everything.

Naeem Khan, who was born in Pakistan and now lives in Canada, came face to face with death and had his whole way of thinking turned upside down.

Naeem earns his bread by navigating treacherous roads of North America as a truck driver, like thousands of others. He told Aaj Digital about the most difficult night of his life, the night when he came face to face with death.

Not only was he reminded that man is powerless in the face of life’s inevitable end, but also cam realized that with the help of some responsible people and institutions, even death can be conquered.

He usually lives and works in Canada but often makes his way south to the US for deliveries by truck. On one such mission, he crossed into America on December 23, heading for North Dakota.

When he started to make his way back home, the roads already carried a thin layer of snow. But he soon received an announcement, a snow storm was raging and roads were being closed. But he decided to press on.

An hour and thirty minutes later, Naeem thought he had crossed into Minnesota. But he had actually veered into South Dakota, right into the thick of the storm.

Then he found out that Interstate 29 was completely blocked. Helpless, with no option of going either forward or backward, Naeem decided to spend his night on a Truck scale.

“It was minus 40 or 45 degrees. If I had stepped out, I would have frozen to death in two or three minutes,” Naeem said.

“I saw death up close.”

Desperate, he called the police. Not only did they turn up quickly but also got him safely to a hotel.

Reflecting on his rescue, he later said that he had realized that a country can only progress if its institutions have a sense of responsibility.

“I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for them,” Naeem said.

In a Tweet, he said, “Disasters come from God, but you are delivered by responsible citizens.”

“No matter how brave you are, you are helpless infront of death,” he said in another tweet.

He offered nafl prayers when he got to the hotel, thankful he had made it out alive.

“Prayers really do have power,” he tweeted.

He added that trade between Canada and the US amounts to almost two billions dollars every day, and thousands of Pakistani truck drivers put their lives on the line to make that trade possible. Many other truck drivers got into a similar predicament.

At a fuel station in South Dakota, 70 truck drivers who had been stuck for a week were finally rescued by the police. Winds of upto 60 miles per hour had created a storm which buried the drivers and their trucks under mounds of snow.

With visibility down to zero many semi-truck drivers and staffers had to take refuge at Coffee Cup Fuel Stop.

The stop’s manage Tim Pletten said that things started getting bad on December 12, and by the 14 the storm had caused enough havoc to close major highways including interstate 90 and interstate 29.

With roads being closed for traffic, authorities started informing truck drivers to find long-term parking. The fuel stop was one of the only places that truck could make it. Photos shared by Pletten show that entire trucks were completely covered by snow.

Pletten said that he had received distress calls from as far as 60 miles away, but there was no way to get fuel to trucks stranded that far.