Good afternoon.

My name is Maryam Al-Sabawi, and I am a grade 12 student.

Yumna was my close friend. Yumna and I had been in the same class since the second grade. In high school, we joined the International Baccalaureate program together and shared almost every class. We ran for student council as a duo. We planned to start a business together, whose profits, we agreed, would be donated to charity. We planned to go to university together. We often spoke of our futures, our hopes and our dreams, like most young kids do.

Yumna was more than a friend to me. She was a confidante, a support system, a study partner, a secret keeper and a giver of hope. Most importantly, she was a constant reminder that good friends do exist.

I miss Yumna. Not a day passes that I don't think of her. I miss her laughter, her smile, her kindness and her sense of humour.

If only we could press rewind. This is what I do each night. I rewind the memories, rewind the sound of her laughter, rewind the endless text messages and rewind the conversations that so deeply connected me to her. I even rewind June 6, 2021. That's when I wish I could press pause. But I can't.

The thought of my friend being targeted, hunted in the streets, mowed down and killed just because of her Muslim faith has been very debilitating, especially as a 14-year-old Muslim girl. Can you imagine how difficult it has been to process what happened? Can you imagine the difficulty of simply existing, feeling safe or trying to move on?

Three years have passed, and parts of me have gone with it. Losing Yumna has left a gaping hole in me. There aren't enough words in the dictionary to describe how difficult these past few years have been. I have been consumed by the thought of what she used to be, what she could have been and what she is. Night after night, I've awoken to the same dream—Yumna being run over as she walks home with her family. I wake up in a sweat, thinking, “Don't worry, Maryam. It's only a dream.” But it's not.

The grief is overwhelming, so much so that at times I'm no longer recognizable to those who love me. At times I'm not even recognizable to myself. I'm not the same. None of us are. How could we be? Most 14-year-olds don't have to worry about burying their friend and then having to figure out how to make sure they don't have to bury any others. I never imagined that the most formative years of my life, my teens, would be spent fighting hate and Islamophobia so that others would not experience the pain that my friends and I have had to experience.

The world placed a responsibility on our shoulders that would have crushed a mountain, but we had to carry it because others haven't. We had to carry it so that no one else would feel the pain that we have felt. We had to carry it because if we didn't, it seemed as though no one else would.

Sleepless nights, fear of trucks and an inability to go for walks have caused me to reflect on what was actually taken from us on June 6, 2021. We didn't just lose Yumna and her beautiful family. We also lost our sense of belonging, our sense of community, our sense of safety and our sense of self. We even lost our innocence. The world isn't as kind as we had believed it to be. All of it was taken because of hate that was left unchecked, hate that was given endless opportunities to grow and hate that was carefully incubated through the silence of others.

I often think of Yumna's last moments. I often imagine her lying alone. I wonder if she was afraid, if she felt pain or if she knew that death was imminent. These thoughts keep me up at night. Just when my mother had finally convinced me that she had died on impact, I learned at the trial that her eyes were open, that she was foaming at the mouth and that perhaps she was trying to speak. I wonder what she wanted to say. I wonder what her message to you would be. I wonder how many others have to die.

Once again, I feel paralyzed, moving through the motions, struggling to exist and struggling to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else. I'm exhausted. My family is exhausted. My friends are exhausted. My community is exhausted. We cannot even grieve in peace. He took from us what did not belong to him, and there is no way to give it back.

The grief is overwhelming, and we have been forced to carry the weight of that grief. That grief hurts. It stings, it burns, it shatters, it crushes and it can even kill. It has robbed us of our dreams, our hopes, our peace and even our sense of self. That grief has been the greatest equalizer in our community, as no one has been able to escape it.

It is our hope that our government will stop using language that dehumanizes us, whether it's referring to Muslims here or Muslims abroad. It is the continuous dehumanization of Muslims that enables others to justify our killing and enables the violent Islamophobia we continue to experience in our schools, in our streets and in our communities.

It is our hope that our governments, on all levels, will recognize the importance of education in addressing hate towards Muslims and will use education as a tool to combat this hate. It is our hope that our government will put politics aside and put people first.

I have to leave because I have a class, but my friends Hamza and Dareen from the YCCI will be answering questions on behalf of the YCCI.

Thank you.