'My heart drowns': anguish as Pakistani girl killed in Texas shooting is buried

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/23/pakistani-sabikha-sheikh-texas-shooting-funeral

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When 17-year-old Sabika Sheikh landed in the US to begin her year-long study program at a Texas high school, she did so with dreams of presenting everyone she met with a new, different face of Pakistan – one far removed from the terrorist attacks they might have seen on TV.

Earlier on Wednesday, her body was returned to Karachi, Pakistan’s business hub, after she was shot and killed in a school last week in Santa Fe, Texas. She was among 10 victims in the latest example of a particularly American nightmare.

A guard of honor met Sabika’s coffin at Karachi airport. Local politicians and the acting American consul general, John Warner, were among hundreds who joined distraught family members at her funeral prayers.

She was later buried alongside her grandparents.

“My heart drowns when I think of the incident,” her father, Abdul Aziz Sheikh, told the Guardian. “My daughter who was scared of needles got killed in a hail of bullets.”

Family members said they hoped Sabika’s death would prompt reform of America’s notoriously loose gun laws. “[She] always wanted to do something for humanity,” her uncle, Abdul Jalil Sheikh, told the Guardian. “We hope that her death will provide a basis to bring a halt to the unabated menace of guns.”

Eight students and two teachers died when 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis opened fire with a shotgun and a revolver just as students were arriving for a new day at Santa Fe high school.

Santa Fe shooting: Texas town reels as names of 10 victims released

Sabika, the eldest of four siblings, had joined the school because of her selection as one of 900 students on the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program, known as YES. The US state department sponsors the program for outstanding students from mainly Muslim countries to live with a host family, attend high school, and learn about American society and values.

According to friends and family, Sabika wanted to join Pakistan’s foreign office and become a diplomat. Joleen Cogburn, the mother of the family who hosted Sabika, wept at the funeral wearing a prayer shawl given to her by the 17-year-old.

The day before she died, Sabika had excitedly told her sister she would be home in time to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid that ends the month-long Ramadan fast. She asked if her sister wanted her to bring anything special.

Her father saw news of the shooting at Sabika’s school on television last Friday, before making frantic, unanswered calls to her phone.

“Was she crying at that moment, talking my name or thinking of her mother?” he said in an interview. “I haven’t been able to get these thoughts out of my mind.”

There have been 22 school shootings in the US so far this year, with 26 students killed. The Texas attack is the deadliest since 14 students and three staff were killed in Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida, after which students formed a growing movement to combat political inertia on gun control.