hamza

Last night I sat with a grieving family, the relatives of 5-year-old Muhmadul Huq, who died after a GMC box truck smashed into him and his pregnant mother.

His mother's okay, and so is his new little sister, who doctors retrieved from her mother's stomach. Emma Huq is two-and-a-half pounds but expected to make it.

The family leaned on each other, and cried a little, and watched as their children gamboled around, and waited for Rashadel to come back from the hospital. They themselves left the hospital at about 11 and Uman Kulsum, Muhmadul's mother, was still asking for her son. Doctors had told her he died early in the morning, but she kept stirring from naps and demanding he be brought to her.

It wasn't originally my story; I was covering for a friend's shift and was sent out to try and find the father and get a picture of the son to run with our article. Our article said that Rashadel had gone back to work yesterday; a street vendor who sells shish kabobs in Times Square, perhaps it wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine that he couldn't miss a day of work even in the face of such tragedy. It caused pause when I read it, and made snappy copy to be sure, but didn't exactly ring true. Still, the reporter swore that's what the father had said, and despite there being six different spellings of his wife's last name (apparently in Bangladesh cultuure the woman does not give up her last name when she marries), the reporter also swore up and down that the father had spelled out the last name and the way he had it in the story was correct.

So, I thought we were on a fool's mission. The photographer and I walked to the car miserably, not wanting to find this guy even if we had the keys to his apartment - who wants to bother a grieving father on the night after his son's death? "Hi, how are you, sorry to bother you when your five year old son has died and all, but could you possibly do us a big favor and get us a picture of him? We swear we're not really vultures, we just play them on TV."

As it was all we had was the address of this guy's apartment building, in the most populated area of Staten Island, so chances were slim anyway. His name, as it was spelled in our already-filed story, was not on the apartment building directory. The door had slid shut behind the last person to go into the building and I did not want to go back so quickly. So I pushed a buzzer. No answer. And another. And another. Finally a person who apparently had no concern for security answered my buzz with one of his own and let us into the building.

We knocked on doors. No answer. No idea. Didn't know him. Who? What happened? Finally someone said, "That's right, he lives in 5M. I'll come up with you and knock."

But no one was in 5M. The friendly guide led us to 5K, to Rashadel's friends' house.

There were kids everywhere, poking out between this couple's legs and running around in the background. It was 10 p.m. They smiled so nicely, and explained that Rashadel had gone to live at his cousin's, and gave us the number where we could reach them and the address of another apartment building.

We called the number. No answer. We went to the apartment building. The name again is not on the directory. There have to be at least 50 apartments in the building. I picked one - 209 - and push. We're let right in, and the guy in 209 handily explained that there was a couple from Bangladesh just down the hall.

Not thinking there was any way we could have found them, we walked down the hall. Sure enough the spicy smell of Indian food and the sound of running children was coming from the door. We knocked, they opened, and let us in.

Rashadel was still at the hospital but all his cousins had flown in from Toronto and Ottawa. They showed us pictures and spoke of Hamza, the nickname they all used for the poor dead child. They spoke in hushed voices, while two-year-old Fayad ran around oblivious, a wide smile on his face because his whole family had gathered. Six-year-old Dinah kept telling us that her cousin was dead, but the matter-of-factness in her tone said she had no more understanding of the word dead than anybody had of how this could happen.

We sat in their living room and I had to ask them if we could take pictures of them sitting there, while they grieved. They didn’t mind at all. We sat there and they arranged to send us more pictures. They told us everything about what was happening at the hospital, as if it wasn't going to appear in print the next day. The whole time I made sure my press pass was hanging from my neck, just to be sure they knew who I was and where I was from, as if my saying it forty-six times wasn't enough.

As it turned out, Rashadel hadn't gone to work that day, and the man who was next to Rashadel when he supposedly told the reporter that's what he was doing was also in the living room, vehemently denying that any such thing had been said. The shish kabob cart was in storage and Rashadel had spent the entire day at his wife's bedside, as she heard the horrible news and continued denying its truth. They corrected the spelling of her first and last name for me. They corrected a lot of things.

This family, who was so open and welcoming, almost had their story grievously mistold in our pages. It horrified me to think of how many errors we don't catch, because we generally don't have the time to speak to 16 neighbors in the aim of finding the family.

I left last night feeling like I'd at least saved the paper from error and this family from losing, on top of everything else, the truth about Hamza, who liked to watch "Shrek" and catch rabbits in the park.

This morning my great-uncle died. He was a Captain in the NYPD, a man of high integrity and large love. They took him off life support two days ago, but he clung on. He died with his whole family around him. His family will shortly come to my house, where they will sit shiva for a week in the Jewish tradition. People will come in, and talk, and offer condolences, and comfort the living. The cultures aren't so different. We welcome in those who can help. And those who get the story wrong...well, they really aren't helping at all.