In the sterile glow of the ICU at the National Burn and Plastic Surgery Institute in Dhaka, 14-year-old Abdullah Shamim lay swathed in bandages — his young body scorched, his life hanging by a thread. Ninety-five percent of his skin had been consumed by fire. Yet, even in unspeakable agony, his voice remained soft. His thoughts weren’t of pain — but of how he looked in the eyes of the sister he loved most.

“Is my body badly burned, Apu?” he whispered.

Farzana Kanika stood beside him, her heart breaking with every breath he drew. She forced a smile, her lips trembling, and offered the only comfort she could.

“No, bhai,” she whispered back. “You’re not badly burned. You’ll be okay. Just be strong.”

She couldn’t tell him the truth. How could she? How do you tell a child — barely more than a boy — that fire has taken nearly all of him? That he had survived the unthinkable — a fighter jet crashing into his classroom at Milestone School and College — only to face a final, silent battle in the burn unit?

Shamim was a student of Class VIII. A quiet soul. A brave one.

Even after the aircraft smashed into Haider Ali Bhaban on Monday, July 21 — after the flames swallowed the classroom, after the smoke and screams and confusion — Shamim did not give in.

He walked. On his own scorched feet. Toward the soldiers rushing to the scene. His clothes in shreds, skin peeling away, he looked up and said, simply:

“Save me.”

Still conscious when they carried him to the hospital, he recited his family’s phone number — clearly, carefully — so they would know where to find him.

By the time Farzana arrived, he was still talking. Still aware. Still her little brother.

She gave him water — a few precious sips, with the doctor’s permission. He smiled, faintly.

Then came the question — the one that would echo forever in her heart:

“Is my body badly burned, Apu?”

Again, she offered the gentlest of lies. “No, bhai. You’ll be fine.”

Inside, she was already mourning.

Later that night, in the still darkness of July 21, Abdullah Shamim took his final breath.

He was buried the next afternoon in his ancestral village in Shariatpur — earth returned to earth, a child laid to rest far too soon.

The eldest of three siblings, Shamim had carried more than his share. Their father had died just seven months earlier of a stroke in Saudi Arabia, far from home.

Now, Farzana says, “My father and my brother are sleeping together. One couldn’t return to us. The other never got the chance to grow up.”

Her voice trembles over the phone from Shariatpur. The grief is raw. The silence heavy — filled not just with sorrow, but with rage. Rage at the fire. At the failure. At the sky that fell without warning.

“He was my courage,” she says. “My pride. And now… now I have to be strong for those who remain.”

But in those final hours — in that ICU, in that unbearable pain — it was Shamim who was strong. A boy who walked through fire. Who remembered his family’s number. Who asked for no comfort but a single, aching truth.

And whose last words were a question no sister should ever have to answer.