This story is of Sabika and of countless children who experience violence.
Sabika was the 17-year-old Pakistani exchange student at Santa Fe High School, in Texas. She had almost completed her nine-month stay in the U.S. and was scheduled to return home in three weeks. On May 18, 2018, Sabika was shot dead with nine other people at her school in Texas. She never returned home.
When she was killed, Sabika was wearing a finger-ring. Now I, her cousin, wear this ring. This ring serves as a tangible reminder that Sabika’s murder and that of thousands of children snatched from their families by gun violence was preventable. Cutting her 18th birthday cake in front of her motionless photo serves as a tangible reminder that the moral conscience of powerful corridors of this country’s legislators will always remain questionable, until they fundamentally neutralize the sheer magnitude of the cold brutality of gun violence.