Not 19-year-old Suleman Dawood, but his mother Christine would normally have been on board Titan. She planned to descend to the wreckage of the Titanic with her husband Shahzada, but the trip was canceled due to the corona pandemic. “Then I stepped back and gave the place to Suleman because he wanted to go so badly,” she said.
Just before father and son boarded the ship, the family embraced and joked. “I was really happy for them because they’ve both wanted to do this for a long time,” said Christine Dawood. Her husband had an infectious curiosity for the world around him, she said. “He had a kind of childish excitement.”
Christine was aboard Polar Prince with her daughter Alina during the search and rescue. When 96 hours had passed—the time when most likely the oxygen would have run out—she lost hope. In a message to her family, she wrote: “I am preparing for the worst”. Her daughter was more hopeful. “She didn’t lose hope until the call came from the Coast Guard, when they told us they had found debris.”
Suleman loved solving a Rubik’s Cube, his mom said. He had signed up for Guinness World Records; his dad had a camera on board to capture the moment. “I’m going to solve the Rubik’s Cube at 3,700 meters below sea level on the Titanic,” Suleman said before departure about the world record he wanted to break. The 19-year-old took the cube with him everywhere, according to his mom. He was able to solve the puzzle in no less than 12 seconds.