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Zahidah is constantly haunted by Sharib’s presence. “He would sit on the steps and talk on the phone with his friends,” she said. Zahidah does not want to think that her son is gone. “I tell myself that he is gone for shopping and he will come back,” she said as she leaned over the doorframe of her house.

She has been trying to get a job to earn enough money to buy a ticket back to Malaysia. “I cannot live here anymore,” Zahidah said. “I do not want to. I just want to go back home.”