Yūsuf Ahmad Waznah was a passenger on the Titanic.
Background[]
Yūsuf Ahmad Waznah came into this world in 1887 in Tibnīn. Tibnīn was a Syrian village with a small population, in those days, the Ottomans had installed a government in the area that is now known as the country of Lebanon. His parents were muslims.
Yūsuf grew up as a farmer and didn’t leave his parental home until 1912. Yūsuf Ahmad Waznah was the cousin of Fatīmah Muhammad Muslamānī and also Mustafà Nasr 'Almā. He was a farmer too and from Tibnīn like him and Fatīmah. The three of them wanted to emigrate to the United States. There, in Michigan City, Indiana, family of Yūsuf, as well as a sibling, had built up a good life.
Their first stop would be in Beirut, which was at the sea. From there on, a ship could bring them to the French coast. Marseilles would be the harbor where they docked. After health inspections, they were free to go to the North of France, where the next vessel would be their way of transport across the Atlantic.
Titanic[]
It was April 10, early in the evening. As Third Class passengers of the RMS Titanic, Yūsuf and his cousins were brought over to the ship via a tender in the harbor of Cherbourg.
On April 14, 20 minutes before midnight, Titanic collided with an iceberg. It took quick decision making by First Officer Murdoch to avoid a frontal hit, but she scraped her starboard side against this large and dangerous object. Underneath, the water started flowing in instantly. Within a minute, a few tons of water had entered the stricken vessel.
On April 15, just after midnight, the captain had just heard from Thomas Andrews how things stood. It was no good, Titanic was going to sink. Captain Smith sent his men to the lifeboats and prepare them. Later that night, Yūsuf, Mustafà and Fatīmah were on the Boat Deck. As a woman, Fatīmah could freely board a lifeboat but Yūsuf and Mustafà were held back and couldn’t get off the ship. Both men lost their lives when Titanic made her decent to the ocean floor. Yūsuf’s body was not ever found, the same goes for Mustafà .
Fatīmah once said in an interview that her cousins were mowed down with gunshots by crew members, but this is not verifiable.