Shahida Raza has played on Pakistan’s national football and hockey teams, but her athletic prowess has not made her rich or allowed her to legally immigrate to Europe.
That helps explain why Ms. Raza, a mother of one, arrived in Italy from Turkey last month on a boat with other economic migrants from Central Asia. Ms. Raza, 29, was one of at least 63 people killed in rough seas crash the boat into the rock about a hundred yards off the Italian coast – painfully close to the land where she had hoped to start a new life.
Ms Raza left her partially paralyzed 3-year-old son to her ex-husband in Pakistan before embarking on her perilous journey. But her family and friends say her plan is to eventually settle the boy in Italy, where she hopes he will receive better medical treatment.
“She is very concerned about his health and wants him to have a normal life,” Saba Khanum, one of her longtime soccer and hockey teammates, said in an interview. question.
Ms. Raza was one of at least two Pakistani citizens killed in the massacre. February 26 shipwreck off the Italian coast of Calabria. Eighty survivors, including 17 of her countrymen. Pakistan’s foreign ministry called the accident an example of “unscrupulous individuals” taking advantage of economic migrants.
This week, Pakistani journalists down to the family of Miss Raza in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, a large, arid province in the southwest of the country bordered by Iran and Afghanistan. They found her room decorated with sports medals and green jacket she wore as a member of the national hockey team.
Quetta is home to many of the Hazara minority, a predominantly Shiite group that has been targeted by Sunni extremists in both countries. Pakistan And Afghanistan. Some Pakistanis see Raza’s death as a symbol of the hardships Hazara face in the region and the pressures they feel to emigrate.
Others in Pakistan, a country where professional male cricketers get attention and money, lamented that Ms Raza’s sporting success did not protect her from tragedy.
“I wish this country would recognize and respect the athletes, their people!” Hajra Khan, a former captain of the women’s soccer team, wrote on Twitter. “May you rest in eternal peace.”
According to Saadia Raza, her older sister, Ms. Raza has played on hockey teams representing Quetta, the capital of her home province, and several government agencies. She has also represented her country many times, going abroad six times to play field hockey and four times to play football.
Ms. Raza ended up joining the Pakistani army’s field hockey team, a job that pays military salaries and enables her to send her son to the army hospital for treatment, Ms. Khanum said. But the army cut her off a few years ago because she refused to stop playing for other teams at the same time.
Her sister said the loss of military pay left her in financial difficulty and desperate to find a new doctor for her son. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and left half of his body paralyzed.
Around the middle of last year, Ms. Raza told Ms. Khanum, her former teammate, that she was planning a trip to Italy because she thought there would be better care for her son and more economic opportunities. more for yourself.
Authorities said that after the shipwreck, the other migrants on the ill-fated boat from Turkey to Italy were mainly from Afghanistan, but also from Iran and Pakistan.
Ms. Khanum said that her former teammate arrived in Turkey in early October. Several members of the Hazara community in Ms. Raza’s hometown, where she once coached youth football, have settled in Australia. But Ms Khanum says making the journey there has become more expensive in recent years.
About an hour before Ms. Raza was scheduled to arrive in Italy, she sent a few voice messages to her family and appeared to be in good spirits.
“She kept thanking Allah that she made it to Europe,” her sister said. “She thinks her economic worries will pass now.”
Then the messages stopped abruptly and never continued.
After the migrants’ boats washed ashore, Italian news agencies showed a priest blessing the bodies of the dead, hidden under white bags. But her sister Raza on Friday said the family was still waiting to receive her body for an Islamic burial.
