DUBAI “She was like an angel and now I know why she’s gone too soon,” said the aunt of 12-year-old Farah Ebrahim who died this week.
“We lost her because someone wanted to save Dh30-Dh40 for a cheaper pesticide. They could have told me and I would have paid for safer treatment. For Farah, I could even rake up a million dirhams, I could give up anything, even myself. She was that special,” her aunt said, trying to hold back tears.
Hussain Ebrahim, her half-brother and first-year student of chemical engineering at the American University of Dubai, said, “She was a great sister, homely and quiet and she loved to swim.”
Her father’s first daughter from two marriages, the sixth grader at Al Ansar International school was the darling of the large Iraqi family. A pall of gloom hung over the family when XPRESS visited their house in Sharjah on Wednesday.
Her aunt pointed to Farah’s photos at different stages of her brief life peering down from all corners of the living room. Her playroom, which she shared with her eight-year-old brother (who is critical in an Abu Dhabi hospital), is scattered with toys, a couple of bikes and colourful slippers strewn on the carpet as if waiting for Farah to put them on.
“She was the perfect girl child you could think of, always a topper in class, spoke English more fluently than Arabic, yet recited the Quran as if she had it in her heart and never missed her prayers,” said the aunt.
No one in the family has dared set that in order, said Farah’s aunt, picking up two cups with pictures of Farah embossed on them.
