It was quite late at night. Yet when I realized that no one from the university was accompanying Abu Saeed’s body to his village, I felt that my responsibility as a teacher could not end there.
I kept thinking about his parents, who sent their son to university with so many hopes and dreams. The university had failed to return him alive. It simply cannot be right that no one from the university accompanies him on his last journey.
So I decided to go. Some relatives of Abu Saeed and eight to ten students involved in the movement traveled with us. Many people warned me that something bad might happen if I went. Some people feared that I would be labeled anti-government.
But all I could see was that my student was killed.
I said, “When a student dies, there is nothing left to be a teacher.”
We reached Abu Saeed’s house around 2 o’clock in the night.
His mother’s heart-rending screams, his father’s blank, stone-faced stare, and his little sister’s desperate words as she held my hand, are moments I will never forget.