Pretty, London-born and bred, and Muslim: 20-year-old Shahara Islam has become the face of London's lost.
At least 50 people were killed and 700 injured in Thursday's bomb attacks on London transport, and Islam's family is desperate to know if she was one of them.
The devout Muslim, whose beaming face is adorning the front pages of national newspapers, took the underground railway to her job in a central London bank as usual on Thursday morning.
PHOTO: AFP
She never made it, and nobody has seen or heard from her since.
The young woman, pictured in a pale blue scarf and top, embodies the callous attack's victims: Londoners, Muslims, daughters, ordinary people off to work, the happy face of the cosmopolitan city.
"It seems an unspeakably cruel fate for a young woman who could have been a poster girl for British Muslims today," the Independent newspaper said yesterday. "Shahara embodies as much as anyone multicultural Britain and the way in which younger generations of Muslims are embracing both their own and Western cultures," and was killed "almost certainly by the terrorists of al-Qaeda, murdering and maiming in the name of her faith."
The slaughter of a young British Muslim woman would provide "proof" for the British public that the unseen enemy is indiscriminate in its violence, but additionally show that the killers are not just targeting the non-Muslim majority.
Her case has just strengthened the vocal condemnation of the attacks by the British Muslim community.
The Sun tabloid printed her picture on its front page alongside one of Laura Webb, 29, who also left for work on Thursday and never arrived.
"Two beautiful, decent women. One Christian. One Muslim. Both missing with dozens more. Pray for them all," Britain's biggest-selling newspaper urged.
Her parents came to Britain from Bangladesh in 1960, and now her family are scouring hospitals across London to find her.
Her uncle Nazmul Hasan was desperately seeking information at the Royal London Hospital.
"We have been constantly calling her mobile," he said. "Her mother is completely distraught and her father is desperately trying to keep it together."
"The whole family is completely devastated. If we had a body, at least we would be able to start mourning. If she was injured really badly, at least we could be there for her in hospital," he said. "What tortures us is the fact that police say that there are still bodies in the tunnel."
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