My precious Sabika,

This was the first Ramazan and this will be the first Eidul Fitr when you will not be physically present with us.

There will be Eidul Azha, your birthday on December 1, the new year, birthdays of your siblings, matriculations and graduations, marriages, each of those without your beautiful presence.

Nothing is able to explain away the grief that we feel every single day. Nothing can fill the most gut-wrenching emptiness and the most painful hole that our family carries in our hearts wherever we go.

The tragedy — that you were snatched from us just days before you were scheduled to return home for Eid — is so profound that it will forever remain incomprehensible.

That Pakistan lost a young ambassador in you — who only knew respect, who only had love to give, and who was so determined to grow up to work for peace — to terror and violence is so profound that it will forever remain nonsensical.

I would often imagine, unsuccessfully attempting to rationalise how families of children lost in war, in conflict, in violence, and in accident, grieve.

I would often wonder if their grief is disenfranchised grief, a grief unrecognised by society.

I would wonder if their grief becomes even more disenfranchised when the world around them is in celebration.

I would wonder if the loss of a child, a sister, a cousin, a friend, incapacitates them from finding joy in festivity.

I would wonder and I would try to empathise, not knowing that the answer would hit so terribly close one day, that it would hit home one day.

Some days, in their entirety, feel like a scene out of an extremely gloomy movie.

Your excitement for returning to Pakistan in time for Ramazan, your enthusiasm for celebrating Eid with your entire family after having spent a year away, you counting the days to your flight, and your anticipation for getting to eat Pakistani food again, especially during Eid — all of it now seems surreal. Sorrowful and surreal.

Perhaps the only solace in your farewell is that you returned home draped in your beloved country’s green and white flag, the country which you so passionately wanted to serve.

Perhaps the only comfort in your departure is that while you departed from your own home, you were welcomed into homes across Pakistan.

And perhaps the only harmony is that while our family lost its daughter, sister, cousin and niece, you now belong as all of these with hundreds of families who embraced your memory as that of their own.

I remember standing, on May 20, 2018, at the back of Masjid Sabireen in Houston where your funeral prayer was being performed, and I remember looking from there at the countless people who had come there bearing the sincerest emotion and the most heartfelt prayer for you.

I remember the umpteen mothers, daughters and sisters who had never met you but who spoke of you as if you had been a part of them all these years.

It is this powerful memory of yours, Sabika, which still allows us to feel empowered in knowing that your name travelled across two worlds not because you were killed with brutality, but because you lived with humility.

Not because you were taken away so young, but because despite that the lives which you entered, touched and impacted — in both your home country and host country — testify to your humble legacy of peace, empathy, and equality. This legacy deserves celebration.

Eid Mubarak, Sabika. Eid Mubarak.