Suleman Dawood, the 19-year-old son of Pakistani millionaire Shahzada Dawood, did not want to join the underwater expedition to the Titanic and eventually agreed to please his father on Father’s Day, his aunt Azmeh has revealed. The two died in the OceanDrive submersible accident along with the other three crew members.
“I’ve been thinking about Suleman every day, picturing him there trying to get maybe one last breath of air,” Azmeh Dawood told NBC from his residence in the Netherlands.
“I still can’t believe it, it all seems so surreal, like a bad movie with a countdown at the end, not really knowing what we were counting on,” added the sister of the Pakistani millionaire. “I’ve felt really bad about the fact that everyone has gone through this trauma, that suspense.”
Suleman Dawood was an Economics student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, and was absent in the final stretch of the course to please his father, a Titanic fan. The two tickets cost him the equivalent of half a million dollars (460,000 euros).
The young man shared some of his father’s hobbies, such as science fiction movies, especially Star Wars and Star Trek. He was known for his skill with the Rubik’s cube and for his love of volleyball.
“The relationship between Shahzada and Suleman was great, the two shared a passion for adventure and exploration,” a family statement read. “That boundless curiosity laid the foundations of the close friendship that united them,” could be read in the official statement from the family.
Shahzada Dawood, born in 1975 in Pakistan, lived in London and was vice president of the Engro Corporation, a Karachi-based conglomerate with interests in sectors such as energy, telecommunications and agriculture. He moved to the UK in the 1990s and studied law at Buckingham University, although he was affiliated with the American Thomas Jefferson University.
In 2012, Shahzada Dawood had been chosen as a Global Young Leader by the World Economic Forum. According to friends of his, “science and exploration was in his DNA” and every year he attempted a trip to remote places, from Alaska to the Kalahari desert.
In 2019, with his family (his children Suleman and Alina and his wife Christine), he survived an air incident during turbulence that nearly ended in a fatal accident. His wife blogged about the experience, “Living with Anxiety,” and acknowledged that his life had undergone a profound change after seeing “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
