Shahida Raza, the athlete who was shipwrecked to save her son

“Thank God, we’re almost there. I’m looking forward to talking to my son.” Those were the last words of Shahida Raza, 27, the captain of the Pakistan hockey team, to her sister Saadia hers. The young athlete was traveling on the Turkish ship ‘Summer love’ with the dream of looking for a hospital in Europe to cure her seriously ill 3-year-old son. But the journey of her hope ended in shipwreck, with the old boat destroyed in the early hours of Sunday, just over 100 meters from a beach in Calabria. The provisional balance of the tragedy already leaves 68 victims. The news has caused a shock in Pakistan, where hockey is the national sport. Shahida represented her country in various international competitions. She was also an excellent women’s soccer player for Balochistan United, a team that advocated integration, accepting players of all religions and ethnicities. Saadia has told the BBC at her home in Quetta, the tragic end of her sister “when she was thanking God that she had almost reached” her goal. “The reason she made this trip was because of her son, who stayed in Pakistan,” Saadia explained through tears, holding up her sister’s trophies. « The boy is very sick. Part of his brain was damaged when he had a stroke, from a fever, at 40 days of life. Now one side of his body, from head to toe, is paralyzed.” Shahida Raza had taken the little boy to various hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city. But she was unable to find the right treatment. Someone suggested that she take him to Europe so that they could offer him the appropriate therapy. Shaida was increasingly desperate, her sister recalls: “She used to say: ‘I can’t see my son like this, I want him to walk like normal children, that’s my only wish.’ She did not want to see her son half of her paralyzed and unable to do anything ». Thanks to her sports career, Shahida traveled to numerous international tournaments. «She made everyone laugh, but she used to cry for her son. Every time she looked at him, her eyes filled with tears,” recalls her sister. »Baluchistan is a poor province. People leave out of desperation, they have no other choice.” An 8,000 euro bill This explains why love for her son and despair led the hockey captain to leave for Turkey to embark in Izmir (Turkey) in the old ship that she packed into the hold for almost 200 people . She paid the human traffickers about 8,000 euros for the ticket. Shahida, nicknamed Chintoo, was a fighter on the field and in everyday life. She had been at Balochistan United for eight years in order to support her family: a victory brought her an income that could vary between 5,000 and 30,000 rupees (between 17.5 and 105 euros). She was also an activist for social integration: «I never get tired, if it were up to me I would play for hours and hours. But then I have to go back to real life and think about my family.” She belonged to the Hazara ethnic group, of the Shiite faith, a minority community with a long history of persecution and attacks by extremist groups. Shahida Raza lost her most important match in the waves of a Calabrian beach. “It’s like the end of the world for our family,” says her sister.