Ten years ago, a delegation of 10 field hockey athletes who visited the D.C. metropolitan area 10 years ago, learning about soccer, rugby, and even watched a women’s tackle football game involving the D.C. Phoenix, all in the name of empowering girls and women through sport. The tour of the U.S., sponsored by the State Department, also took the players to North Carolina for a field hockey clinic.
I scanned pictures and video footage of that trip in the last few days when I heard the news about Shahidi Razi, the former captain of the Pakistan women’s field hockey team. She had ended her international career when she started a family, but her first-born son suffered a stroke, and her husband subsequently divorced her.
But late last month, a boat carrying Razi and hundreds of refugees from east and central Asia crashed off the coast of Italy. These migrants, from various locations, were seeking a better situation for their families. Razi was killed in the crash.
As far as I can tell, Razi was not in any of the publicity footage or photos of the trip. It does, however, give thought to what might have happened if she had been chosen for the trip. Would she have made different choices in her life had she been exposed to the way other women live their lives through sport?
It does make me think about the choices she was forced to make because of differences in health care systems, or social structures. How desperate Razi must have been to feel as though she could only find medical care for her son by traveling on a boat with little more than the clothes on her back.
As much as some people belittle the American health care system, it cannot be worse than what this family was facing. I shudder to think what kind of life this special-needs child now faces in Pakistan.
