Abdul Aziz learned about the US school shooting in which his 17-year-old daughter was killed on CNN, with the story airing live as he broke his Ramadan fast thousands of miles away in Pakistan.
In those chaotic first moments of confusion and terror he called his daughter Sabika Sheikh's phone over and over. She did not answer.”I kept calling her and sent her messages on WhatsApp. Never before had my daughter failed to reply,” Aziz told AFP, fighting back tears at his home in the southern port city Karachi today, just hours after he and his wife had their worst fears confirmed.
“We are still in a state of denial. It is like a nightmare,” said Aziz. His wife sat nearby, visibly still shocked and seemingly unable to speak as friends and relatives tried to comfort her.Sheikh, an exchange student at the Santa Fe High School in Texas, was killed along with nine others after a heavily armed student opened fire on his classmates Friday.