At 21, Sara Ali has been left to shoulder the responsibility of caring for her elderly grandparents and her anguished mother.
Sara's world came to a crashing halt last week Tuesday, when her father Jameel, 49, and her brother Quadir, 24, were burnt beyond recognition after their van exploded in an accident on Churchill-Roosevelt Highway in St Augustine. The father and son were returning home after selling produce at Macoya Wholesale Market in Tunapuna. Police said the pick-up in which Jameel and Quadir were travelling collided with an Audi, in which Khalil Karamath, the 21-year-old son of business contractor Hafeez Karamath, was a passenger.
But almost a week after the tragedy, the Ali family members are yet to piece together their shattered lives. "My mother crying everyday. I still cannot believe my father and brother gone, because every evening I keep looking out for the van," Sara Ali said during an interview at her Jackson Street home in Petit Bourg, San Juan, yesterday. A teller with RBTT bank, Ali said she was forced to take time off from her job to care for her grieving family.
"It's really hard, because my father and brother were the sole breadwinners. Now everything has fallen on me." Since the incident, the young woman said her family had received no financial assistance to bury their dead, nor or an apology from the other party. "It's a real pity. No one came forward to say 'sorry.' But then again, who are we? Nobody," Sara Ali said. She also expressed little faith in the Police Service, claiming that the incident would be "swept under the carpet.
"Every time we call the police the investigator is not there. The last we heard he was on vacation. "It's a sad state in this country, because nobody could be held accountable for anything...Nobody could feel my pain." A day before their deaths, Jameel and Quadir prepared their one-and-a-half acres of land to plant tomatoes. They were to sow the seeds yesterday. Afterwards, they had planned to go to Maracas to fish, Sara Ali said.
But with their deaths, the family's garden might now to go waste. "Nothing is happening with the garden.That was our bread and butter. It is just there and right now we have no answers." According to Ali, there were claims that at the time of the accident, a car was drag racing on the highway, and this might have caused the crash. Left with unanswered questions, Sara Ali said her key to closure was to come face to face with the person responsible.
"I want to meet that person to find out exactly what happened. I just want to sit and have a normal conversation with him. That's the only way my family could come to terms with this." Police said yesterday that the incident was still under investigation. Asked if any arrests were imminent, the officer said the matter was at a "sensitive stage."