My sister, my hero. <3

I don’t know how to start this entry on my professional film blog and I am 100% sure my sister will murder me for this in the morning when she finds out but I write this to put into words what I must express to myself, my family, friends and sister.

My sister Sara Azimi is incredible.

In the Philippines, during the most terrible typhoons, she would don a wetsuit and join the rescue convoys pushing out into the flooded sections of Metro Manila as a rescue diver. Diving into waters chocked with dangerous debris and toxic waste to save others.

In Kabul, every time she steps out of our home to commute to work is a great act of courage. Kabul is a dangerous and it is especially difficult for women – Afghan or foreign, even a decade after the Taliban were driven from the city.

And less than a week ago 4 teenage gunmen, burst into the Serena hotel in Kabul and shot to death 9 people, many of them eating dinner at a restaurant that my sister and father had just left two hours prior to the attack. If they had stayed a little longer, there would have been 11 people slain in the attack and I would have lost both my sister and father.

But they narrowly escaped the attack and for that I will always thank God but father’s joint venture partner Vince was still in the hotel at the time, trapped by the attack.

Chaos and panic spread throughout the hotel as soon as the shooting started and Vince had no idea what was going on. Where the attack was coming from, how many attackers there were – he was full of questions and mortal terror.

But my sister was able to place a phone call to Vince and spent the next hour and 30 minutes talking him through the attack. She ordered Vince to barricade his hotel room, grab a pillow and blanket and take shelter in the bathtub of his bathroom.

As she spoke with Vince, she could hear the deafening bang of assault rifles in the background. The gunfire would draw closer to Vince’s room and at times it would draw farther away, I think it might have been the longest hour and 30 minutes for both Vince and my sister.

Sara provided Vince a window into what was happening around the hotel as she was receiving news about the assault, she urged him to remain calm and to tell her instead about his daughter working in Somalia.

My sister was calm and levelheaded and courageous, she stayed with him throughout the attack and never left him alone till she was sure he was safe and sound.

That next morning, Vince and his entire family wrote messages of thanks to my little sister for her heroism that terrible night. She wept at their heartfelt words.

My sister is a hero.

My father and sister visited the Serena a hotel two days after the attack, determined to find out if anyone they knew were among the dead. As they made their way through the hotel, my father and sister embraced many of the hotel staff they have known years and wept with them, sharing their grief over the horrible loss of life and all thankful to still be alive.

And I am writing these words to share her heroism proudly with the rest of the world. She is my sister and one of the three greatest people I will ever know in my life, the other two being my father and mother.

I love you Pooches, you’re my hero and the entire world is lucky to still have you among us.

– KG — with Sara Lailee.

My sister, the superhero. <3[/caption]