Eight months after she and three members of her family died in what police say was a hate-motivated attack in London, Ont., the legacy of 15-year-old Yumnah Afzaal continues to inspire change.
On Saturday, a painting by artist Amer Sal Mohammed — who works under the name Amer SM — was unveiled at the city’s White Oaks Mall. The artwork was inspired by a floor-to-ceiling mural that Yumnah painted in the halls of the London Islamic School.
This new work retains much of Yumnah’s vision, including the dreamy vista of space and the statement: “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you will land among the stars.”
Amer SM, based in Toronto, added a few new elements, including silhouettes of the four fallen members of the Afzaal family. In the bottom-right corner, he painted Yumnah, brush in hand, as she applies the final few strokes.
“I tried to keep the piece as original as possible to her own work,” he said. “I feel truly honoured to be a part of this.”
The painting will hang at White Oaks Mall for three months before moving to the London Muslim Mosque for display, close to the one-year anniversary of the attack on June 6, 2021.
Yumnah; her father, Salman Afzaal, 46; her mother, Madiha Salman, 44; and her grandmother, Talat Afzaal, 74, all died when they were hit by a truck while out for an evening walk. Yumnah’s brother, Fayez, who was nine years old at the time of the attack, survived.
The attack sent waves of immense grief through London’s 30,000-strong Muslim community and beyond. It also sparked an ongoing national discussion about the prevalence of Islamophobia in Canada.
Huda Sallam, shown in front of Amer SM’s painting on Saturday at the White Oaks Mall, was Yumnah’s close friend. She says Yumnah’s work continues to inspire other students. (Andrew Lupton/CBC)
But before that terrible event, there was Yumnah with the world in front of her and a desire to create an inspiring piece of art before moving on to high school.
At Saturday’s unveiling, Yumnah’s friend, Huda Sallam, spoke about how a determined Yumnah came to create the now-famous mural.
Sallam admits she doubted whether Yumnah — who had never before worked with spray paint — would be able to complete such an ambitious work.
“I said, ‘Yumnah, you’re starting in two weeks, you can’t master spray painting in two weeks,'” Sallam said. “She said, ‘No, I’m gonna do it.'”
The painting by Amer SM was inspired by a mural created by Yumnah at the London Islamic School before she graduated to high school. (Andrew Lupton/CBC )
Shortly after, Sallam visited Yumnah as she taught herself how to spray paint in her parents’ garage.
“She was wearing a big gas mask like SWAT officers wear when they are raiding houses,” Sallam said. “It was way too big on her. She had a lab coat on and these gigantic boots, and she had her phone on the ground watching YouTube videos about how to do it. When I walked in, I was in awe because she had completely mastered the three techniques for spray painting. Totally mastered them. In two weeks.”
The mural was a massive success, and in the days after the attack, its message of perseverance and optimism became a focal point of both the immense loss and the hope it could lead to positive change.
Aarij Anwer, an imam and director of religious affairs at the London Muslim Mosque, says the deaths of Yumnah, her parents and grandmother have left a ‘deep wound’ in the city’s Muslim community. (Andrew Lupton/CBC)
Aarij Anwer, an imam and director of religious affairs at the London Muslim Mosque, says he has already seen some of that change.
“This family, we are never going to be able to replace them,” he said. “But we don’t want their lives to be lost in vain. These charges are the positive steps we hope for, and they are coming.”
The steps he’s talking about include the City of London’s move to hire a Muslim community liaison officer and enact an extensive plan to combat Islamophobia. Anwer also pointed to the passing in the Ontario Legislature of the Our London Family Act, which has a similar aim.
This mural was painted by Yumnah in the hall of the London Islamic School, with help from her mother, Madiha Salman. Both died in the attack on June 6, 2021. (Rob Krbavac/CBC)
Meanwhile, London’s Muslim community is bracing for the pain that will surely come on the attack’s one-year anniversary in June. More grief is expected as the man charged in the attack begins his trial, which will also come this spring. His next court date is in April.
“It’s a deep wound,” Anwer said of the attack. “But these gestures of solidarity, compassion and love, they really mean the world. This is what helps us know that our neighbours care for us, and this is what helps us mend those broken hearts.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
