The doormat of Christine Dawood’s Surrey mansion warns visitors they “must get the approval of Stig”.
A housekeeper lets me in and shows me to the front room. A minute later, Stig arrives to commence his inspection. He is a 6½ year old Bernese mountain dog, the size of a small pony.
After sniffing me and nuzzling my hand, Stig’s approval is secured – he wags his big tail so clumsily, he knocks off a water glass on the coffee table.
“Doesn’t your prime minister have one like him?” says Dawood. Our former president, Michael D Higgins, had several, I say. They looked even bigger next to him.
Dawood (51), speaking flawless English in her native Bavarian lilt, states her approval of the Republic’s former first dogs and owner. She is friendly, chatty, warm but also a little wry, true to Germanic form.
Meanwhile, Stig, suitably chastened after half-wrecking the place, settles down on the floor with his big head between his thick paws. His eyes follow Dawood everywhere she goes. The dog clearly idolises her. You’d almost swear he can sense her grief.
Dawood’s husband Shahzada (48) and son Suleman (19) were among five people killed three years ago next month in the Titan submersible disaster.
Dawood and her husband had paid $500,000 for two seats on the small vessel owned by private company OceanGate that was on a mission to descend 3.5km beneath the surface of the North Atlantic to view the wreck of the Titanic. She was meant to be on board, but at the last minute Suleman begged for her seat.
Titan imploded deep into its descent, crushed by the weight of the water. All on board died instantly.
Suleman Dawood (19) and his father Shahzada (48) both died in the Titan disaster in June 2023. Photograph: Engro Corporation
As well as Dawood’s husband and son, the disaster killed British businessman Hamish Harding (58), OceanGate’s co-founder Stockton Rush (61) and Paul-Henri Nargeolet (77), Titanic expert and the mission guide.
All the while, Dawood was a few thousand metres above on the Atlantic surface anxiously waiting for news of the lost submersible on a base ship, Polar Prince, along with Suleman’s teenage sister Alina, OceanGate staff and the ship’s crew, as well as loved ones of other victims.
They were meant to be on the trip of a lifetime. Instead, OceanGate’s safety failures, including Titan’s engineering flaws, cost Dawood and her daughter half their family.
She has written a book, 96 Hours, chronicling minute by minute, hour by agonising hour, her experience of the tragedy, which also played out in real time across the globe as a sensational media story followed by millions. It was known at the time that the submersible had 96 hours of oxygen, before Titan’s ultimate fate was later discovered.
Yet for those involved, objectified and dehumanised in the media frenzy, it was far more than just a story. It was life, death and loss; a human calamity.
The book’s narrative of tragedy is interspersed with personal scenes from Dawood’s life with her husband, how she fell in love with this scion of a wealthy Pakistani business family, their happy times together, and their journeys – including their final one.
The submersible Titan, which was used to visit the wreckage site of the Titanic. Photograph: OceanGate/PA
“There were so many different narratives out there, some a bit harsh,” she says. “With the book I wanted to show how Shahzada and Suleman really were as people. I wanted their voices to come out – to give a human story to the names.”
Dawood, a psychologist, says she also wanted to “claim her own identity back” after the media frenzy, and to explore and come to terms with her own grief.
“I am not just the ‘mother of’ or the ‘wife of’. There is a life here as well. And my husband was more than just a person who died far beneath the waves. So was my son. I wanted to give a voice to my boys,” she says.
“In the process of writing, I also wanted to feel the feelings. If you don’t acknowledge grief, it’s going to catch you.”
Dawood’s luxurious home is a half-hour train ride south of central London. The front room is full of pictures, memories, symbols of her and Shahzada’s life together, this unusual union between a Bavarian Catholic and a wealthy Pakistani Muslim.
[ Titan submersible: ‘All good here’ – one of last texts from crew revealed at hearingOpens in new window ]
There is a picture on the wall of them on their wedding day almost 25 years ago, Dawood in traditional Pakistani dress, henna adorning her hands. There are other photographs either side of the big TV of the family together over the years; happy scenes of the past.
There is a gilded copy of the Koran on one shelf, sitting in between family trinkets, ornate little statues of lions, cats and Asian elephants. There are signs, too, of the family’s privilege – opulent leather furniture, a couple of boxes of new designer shoes.
Yet privilege means little in the face of such loss. On the other side of the TV to the Koran, there is a coloured ornamental plate with small, childish handprints – one is a young Suleman’s, splodged in bright paint. In the kitchen is a Lego replica, built by the teenage Suleman, of the Titanic ship with which he and his father became so enamoured.
Dawood has worked hard to try to come to terms with what she has lost.
“I think I’ve come quite far in my grief. I don’t want to put myself under any expectations. But I also know that I’m privileged enough to take my time, and I’m thankful for that.”
She wants to shield her daughter, now 20, from attention. Alina, she says, is “doing okay”.
Dawood and her husband’s love story began in a German university in 2000. They were immediately smitten, meeting on roof tops to watch “strawberry sunsets” despite their language barrier – she couldn’t speak English at the time. But she immediately knew she would marry him, the new century ahead was “there for the taking” for both.
Christine Dawood: ‘With the book I wanted to show how Shahzada and Suleman really were as people.’ Photograph: Joanne O’Brien
They moved first to Pakistan, where Shahzada worked in the family business – the wider Dawood family own a conglomerate that includes an energy company. They lived there for eight years, later moving to Singapore and then England more than 12 years ago.
The family were adventurous, travelling to Greenland and Iceland. Dawood’s Bavarian upbringing on a mountainside had encouraged a wanderlust, a love of the outdoors.
“But I also liked comfortable holidays. Shahzada hated beach holidays. He didn’t like the salt on his sensitive skin. I would have liked a few more beach holidays for us.”
Suleman also liked the outdoors. He was a clever teenager, adept with a Rubik’s cube – he would later bring one on the Titan, determined to break the record for solving it at the greatest depth. Suleman was studying business at Strathclyde University in Glasgow.
Suleman’s fascination with Titanic began when he was a child living in Singapore. Shahzada would also develop an interest. Years later, when Dawood spotted an ad for OceanGate’s elite tourism trips to view the wreck, the family jumped at the chance.
Dawood and Shahzada arranged to meet Rush and his wife, Wendy, at a cafe in London four months in advance of the trip, scheduled for June 2023. Dawood found him cocky – it would later transpire in investigations that he had ignored safety worries.
The remains of the Titan submersible on the floor of the Atlantic ocean. Photograph: US coast guard video/Pelagic Research Services via AP
That summer, the Dawood family flew to Newfoundland, where Titan, unbeknown to them, had spent months lying exposed in a car park. They caught the Polar Prince out to the site of the Titanic wreck, 685km off the coast of Canada.
At 9am on June 18th, 2023, Suleman and Shahzada joined the other three on the Titan’s fateful descent. Dawood waved them off into a dinghy that took them out to the dive platform. She would never see them again.
[ Titan submersible implosion that killed five was preventable, US Coast Guard report saysOpens in new window ]
At about 11am, Dawood was sitting in the Polar Prince’s mess when a crew member walked in and uttered three words that would change her life: “They lost comms.”
For the next four days, hope drained from Dawood and the others waiting on the Polar Prince as they waited to hear from the Titan – those on board also included Wendy, Rush’s wife. Coastguard planes dropped electronic buoys from above while millions followed the unfolding drama on the news. Dawood kept away from social media and the news.
“I just remember this physical sense of isolation. There is literally only water out there and nothing else. You feel like you’re sitting out there on a desert on top of the ocean.”
Ships that could potentially help with the search were days away.
Dawood recorded all the update briefings held on board the Polar Prince while the Titan was missing. She also kept all the WhatsApp messages the group shared, including the technical details of the search. These records formed the basis of the book.
People just don’t know what to say. They are not being vicious – they are just not equipped
— Christine Dawood
In one especially poignant moment, after the 96 hours were up and reality dawned, Dawood recalls going on deck with her daughter and looking mournfully out to sea.
“I’m a widow now,” she said that day. Years earlier, when her father had died when Dawood was a pregnant 27-year-old, her late mother had said exactly the same thing.
“At that moment, as I looked out to sea, I felt very close to my mother,” says Dawood. She cites everything that came following the 96-hour deadline and the subsequent confirmation, via the sighting of debris, of what had happened, as “the after”.
Dawood and her daughter, along with Shahzada’s distraught parents and siblings, flew back to London, her husband’s backpack on the seat where he should have been.
[ Inside the Titan: A tight fit and a view from a single portholeOpens in new window ]
“We left London as a family of four. And we returned as a unit of two.”
Despite the later investigations that revealed Rush’s litany of safety failures, Dawood says she has chosen not to be bitter or angry. It must be a struggle.
“I am not going to start pointing fingers. That is not a part of this book,” she says.
Dawood says she toyed with the idea of becoming a public advocate for better marine safety, but decided she didn’t have the skill set. Instead, she is leaning into her natural propensity to be a carer of others, and also as a psychologist.
She is setting up a “trauma centre” in a listed building in Devon, where people who have experienced terrible things in their lives can get psychological care, as well as “non-medical but evidence-based” treatments such as acupuncture and sound healing.
Dawood takes me to her back garden to show me its bounty of 4,000 tulips. Stig follows. She shows me a bench in a secluded corner where she regularly sits and thinks.
“People sometimes say ‘I don’t know how you do it – it would be my worst nightmare.’ But do you not think it was my worst nightmare too? People just don’t know what to say. They are not being vicious – they are just not equipped.
“I now choose – and it is a very conscious choice – to concentrate on the things I am grateful for. The book helped me get things off my chest. To get it off my soul.”
Ninety-Six Hours: A Wife and Mother’s Desperate Search for the Lost Titan Sub, by Christine Dawood, is published by Whitefox
