Emaan Aqil Abbasi

Lahore, Pakistan

Unspoken Connection

The silence of the afternoon was punctuated by sniffles. Our school was barely visible between the branches of the oak as we grieved the loss of our pluckiest. I shuddered at the thought of how close it had come to being razed. I went to an international school, fascinated by the myriad of cultures whirling around me from all over the world. Normally I would be intimidated amongst so many of my class fellows, but today, it felt right. Our entire branch stared at the grave of a fellow student, who had died stopping a bomber.

A group of Korean girls in black bowed twice to the grave, with pursed lips and full eyes. A Chinese boy in white and his friend from South Africa in red marked the headstone. The student’s French brother read a short eulogy before succumbing to tears and was taken away by the Spanish twins. I approached the grave, knelt down and recited some verses from the Qur’an. A student sang something in Welsh that moved us all to tears.

The beauty of that moment washed over me. For a moment, we were one under the canopy of that oak tree. Grief was a universal language.