Shock and sorrow as community mourns teenager

HOUSTON’S Muslim community gathered to offer prayers last Sunday (20) at the funeral service for 17-year-old Pakistani exchange stu­dent Sabika Sheikh.

About 1,000 people, many with Pakistani roots and wearing traditional Muslim dress, converged on an Islamic center in Stafford to honour Sabika, whose body was brought by hearse to the somber service from Santa Fe, the nearby small rural town where a student murdered 10 people including eight students.

Among the mourners was the late teen’s first cousin who lives in the US. She said Sheikh’s relatives are completely devastated.

“The family back home, we are in touch with them. They’re crying every moment. Her moth­er is in denial right now,” Shaheera al-Basid, a graduate student in the US capital Washington, said at the funeral service.

“It’s a shock we need our entire life to recov­er from,” the 26-year-old added.

Men lined up in rows offered traditional mourning prayers as Sheikh’s coffin, draped in the green and white flag of Pakistan, was brought into a small, cramped sanctuary.

“It’s a shock, it’s so sad,” said realtor Ike Sa­mad, 67, who was born in Pakistan but has lived in the US most of his adult life and raised his children as Americans.

“I came here just like her, as a student,” he recalled. “God forbid that could have hap­pened to me when I was here. As a parent, it is just devastating.”

Samad also addressed the painful irony that a young woman from a country that many Americans associated with the war on terror was killed in a country that millions around the world see as a bastion of freedom.

Several Pakistani-American youths also at­tended the funeral service, including Danyal Zakaria of nearby Sugar Land, Texas.

The 17-year-old said it was “truly mind-blowing” that an exchange student his age could be cut down in cold blood at a US school.

“This nation is known to be safe,” he said. “If America is not safe, then where is?”