By Sammie Jones-
The brother of a family killed in the Greenfell fire has given a moving account of how he stayed on the phone to his sister until the moment she suffocated along with their mother, as the doomed tower block was consumed in deadly flames.
On the sixth day of commemoration hearings, Ahmed Elgwahry told the inquiry of the painful experience of having to witness the knowledge of his sister and mother’s fate. Elgwahry was on the phone to his 27-year-old sister, Mariem, and his mother, Eslah, as the inferno engulfed the high-rise flats. He told the inquiry he heard his mother struggle for her last breath.
Ahmed recounted the time he spent with Mariem the evening before the fateful night, until she returned to her home in Grenfell where she cared for their mother, who was suffering from a deteriorating health.
Mariem, who was a marketing manager, was remembered as one always happy and like “a ray of sunshine”, he said. “She was a beautiful, ambitious and talented woman. She wanted to succeed in her marketing career and she had fallen in love.”
His voice trembling from time to time as he spoke, the sorrow in his heart was very tangible. Elgwahry told how his late sister raised money for a medical charity in memory of their father, who died when she was young. He told the inquiry that the day after the fire, she had been to due to attend an interview for a “dream job”.
Ahmed had said goodbye to her earlier in the evening before the fire broke out. “Little did I know that would be the last time I saw her,” he said. A few hours later Mariem phoned her brother and his wife. She told them there was a fire in the building and she had already left the flat.
“I knew she was scared,” Ahmed said. “I told her to get the hell out of the building. I will never forget the feeling. I felt very sick. She and my mum were trapped on the top floor even before I left [home]. The drive to the flat felt so long. I remember running to Grenfell Tower but it felt so slow.” Mariem’s grieving brother told how she rang him whilst he stood below the tower.
“She started to calm down. She was trying to provide reassurance [to their mother]. She could not see fire but it was clear she knew it was coming. She was trying to keep my mum calm”.
They all knew their flat with all the family’s mementos would be destroyed. “It was not only Mariem and Mum who died that day,” Ahmed said, “I felt that my father died again. The truth is that they were both trapped and there was no way out.”
”It would have been suicide to run into the building to try and rescue them, he added. “I recall moments of silence between us on the phone. I knew [Mariem] had a decision to make. I believe she could have made it out but she would never have left my mum. She stayed back and comforted her.
“She kept going until she was no longer audible. She started to mumble and there was banging on the floor and finally no response. About 20 seconds later I heard my mum’s voice. She was struggling for breath. She said her last words: ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.’ She was so frightened.”
Ahmed said he remained on the phone and could hear the sound of crackling as the fire penetrated the windows. “They were poisoned by the smoke. I had to listen to them suffering. I had to listen to them die. If that’s not torture, I don’t know what is.”
Three months later, he said, he received fragments of bone and muscle tissue from the archaeologists working with the coroner. It was like “piecing my family back together, as if we are dinosaurs”, he said.
“Mariem was one of many who had raised concerns about health and safety before the fire. On the night of the fire I heard her voice for the last time. Today she had no voice. I’m her voice.”
Ahmed Elgwahry said it was still too painful to talk about the loss of his mother and some of his grief would remain private.
“This was no accident,” he said.
The inquiry heard many moving tributes today. A tribute made to Sakineh Afrasiabi from her daughter, Sheila, was read through a solicitor, Eva Whittle. Sheila was too overwhelmed to attend in person.
Sheila said that she had now lost her only friend and protector, someone who was her only shield from the world.
“I always had somewhere else to go. Now I am always lonely. In the first few days after the fire I would just walk around the tower and wail and cry,” he recalled. She said all that was left of her mother was a tooth and a jawbone, which was buried. Sheila said that she had lost the only person who truly loved her and she was now very very lonely.
She said she missed her mother and aunt, with whom her mother had died, and would always love them unconditionally.
Shortly before 5pm on Tuesday, the inquiry heard from Abubak Ibrahim, who paid a tribute to his mother, brother and sister – Fathia Ali Ahmed Elsanosi, 73, Abufars Ibrahim, 39, and Isra Ibrahim, 33, all of whom died in the Greenfell fire
Ibrahim told the inquiry their father had been killed in the 1980’s under circumstances he didn’t wish to discuss . He told the inquiry his mother was the head mistress of a primary school in Sudan and was married to a military officer. The family had a l childhood but his father was killed in the 1980s in circumstances that he did not wish to discuss.
His mother later decided to leave the country and they came to England, where they came to love the country.
“My mother worked hard in a foreign land to keep us together,” she says.
“When you come as an adult to a foreign country with children it is a very difficult thing.”