Tahfiz tragedy: ‘How I knew my boy had died’

A mother says she identified her son's charred body by his crooked teeth.

KUALA LUMPUR: She lost her only son in the Sept 14 Darul Quran Ittifaqiyah fire, but there was a hint of amusement in her voice as she recalled how she knew for sure that the 11-year-old had died.

“It was his crooked teeth,” she told FMT in an interview at her flat in Keramat.

“I knew even before they asked parents to identify the bodies that I would know my boy if I could look at his teeth.

“All of us in the family have crooked teeth, but my boy had the worst of them and we used to tease him about it.” A slight grin showed on her face as she said that.

The two children she has left, both girls, were playing noisily in the background as she spoke. She was talkative but was too shy to allow her name to be used in a news report.

She said she sent her son to the tahfiz school because he wanted it and she thought it would be good for him because there were naughty children in the neighbourhood and she’d rather not have him running around with them.

“He told us he wanted to go to the tahfiz school and I agreed. He hadn’t even been circumcised yet. He was supposed to get it done before he turned twelve, but now …” There was a pause, and she seemed to be gulping air. “Now he’s in a better place.”

Responding to a remark about how strong she seemed in accepting her loss, she smiled and said other parents had said the same thing about her.

“He wanted to go to the school and I let him. So I suppose it’s a little easier for me to accept fate.

“People say that maybe God opened my heart and allowed me to accept the divine plan a little more easily than others. I tell them that I just hope it lasts and that I won’t suddenly get hit by his absence.”

She said her husband had also accepted the tragedy soon after it happened, but he did awake in the middle of the night recently and broke down.

“As he was going to sleep on that night, he told me, ‘I think I’m starting to feel that he’s gone.’

“I told him not to talk that way. I said we had to stay strong for our girls. But later, in the middle of the night, he went to a window and called out our boy’s name.”

She said her two daughters would sometimes speak of how much they missed their older brother.

“I tell them not to be sad because when they’re sad he gets even sadder up there. I tell them that whenever they miss him, the best thing to do is to say a prayer for him.” -FMT