Rafia Afsar, an alumna of the American International School of Dhaka (AISD) writes to express the collective thoughts and emotions of the entire school’s community in the aftermath of her schoolmate > Tarishi Jain’s death:
Dear World,
Several horrible atrocities are taking place in our time, one of which occurred in our loving city of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Many people unfortunately died and many fingers were pointed but this letter isn’t about the killings.
This letter is to celebrate the lives of three of our beloved friends who we will never see again - this is to celebrate love.
Our community, the Tigers of AISD share a deep connection full of passion, love, devotion and loyalty. We aren’t just a collection of batch mates of years past from a school, we are a family that comes together to celebrate our school’s events, its students and their success, the victories of our sports teams, the graduation of each batch that passes out and so much more. But for the first time we came together, that too in stronger numbers than we’ve ever gathered, for something other than celebrating. We came together to mourn.
Abinta Kabir, Tarishi Jain and Faraaz Hossain are names that you heard for the first time on Saturday morning. For us, they are the names of our basketball star athlete, our designated choreographer and our executive council’s president. Our entire school only consisted of a little over 700 tightly-knitted students, hence everyone knew everyone.
Abinta was someone who always made us laugh with her stories and left us in awe with how effortlessly she shot hoops while playing for our basketball team.
Tarishi was someone who inspired us with her ideas, work ethic and flawlessness and always came to the rescue whenever any of us would be lost at ideas for cultural events. She brought us joy in being Tigers.
Faraaz was someone we all looked up to. He showed us what a good leader is with everything he did, and was modest. He taught us to care about the world around us and made us believe that we can make a difference.
All three of them were great friends to each other and this was evident in their last moments. We feel so fortunate to have had them as a part of our family. We can only hope that we carry out lives that will make them smile in pride of what their fellow Tigers have achieved. They will always be there in the memories and hearts of us all.
We can only hope that you never have to experience the loss that we have felt, and will continue to feel so. We encourage everyone to face the outcomes of incidents like these with love, the way we Tigers have been doing. Let’s hope that we, the world, are able to celebrate life and celebrate love.
With great love from our hearts to yours,
The Tigers of AISD
“Once a Tiger, Always a Tiger”
