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Suleman Dawood never went anywhere without one Rubik’s Cube. The submersible exploring the Titanic wreck at the bottom of the North Atlantic was no exception.
Suleman, who died at the age of 19 with his father and three others when the submersible Titan imploded, wanted to film himself solving a Rubik’s cube on the sea floor about 12,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic.
“He was competing for a world record because he basically wanted to solve the Rubik’s Cube at the bottom,” Christine Dawood told the BBC in an on-camera interview. Though she said the application was denied, he still plans to document the mystery.
“He said, ‘I’m going to solve the Rubik’s Cube at 12,000 feet,'” Christine said. “And he was so excited about it.”
Christine and her daughter Alina, 17, now plan to honor Suleman’s memory by learning to solve a Rubik’s Cube themselves. “It’s going to be a challenge for us because we’re really bad at it,” she said. “We promised to learn it for Suleman.”
Guinness World Records said in a statement that it received an application from Suleman “with a new record title proposal for the deepest solution of the Rubik’s Cube” earlier in the year.
Who were the five passengers on the missing Titan submersible?
The four-day global search and rescue operation for the Titan after it went missing off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada drew worldwide attention. Also among the passengers were Suleman’s father, British-Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, 48; two other wealthy passengers, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who each paid $250,000; and the CEO of the operating company, Stockton Rush.
The anecdote sheds more light on its most recent passenger, Suleman, who did it recently graduated from ACS International School Cobham in England – and the tribute to a family that has lost both a father and brother.
“I really miss her,” Christine said.
The plan previously applied to her and her husband going down with the Titan before the coronavirus pandemic, Christine said. Suleman was not yet 18 years old and therefore not suitable for the expedition.
But the pandemic delayed the family’s plans. When it came time to make the trip in June, Christine said she “took a step back and gave Suleman the space because he really wanted to go.”
The father-son duo have wanted to take this trip “for a very long time,” she said. “I was really happy for her.”
The Titan incident prompted an investigation by the US Coast Guard and has raised questions about the safety record of the submersible’s operating company, OceanGate, and increased scrutiny of the unregulated deep-sea tourism industry.
Christine and her daughter observed the submersible’s voyage from the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince. She said she “lost hope when we passed the 96 hour mark” – the estimated point at which the submersible ran out of oxygen.
Before Shahzada and Suleman boarded the Titan, “the family hugged and joked,” Christine said.
It was a lifelong dream of her husband, she said. “Shahzada was so looking forward to going down, he was like a little kid.”
How it feels to run out of oxygen
The BBC interview is the first time Christine, a career development and life coach who sits on the board of the Dawood Foundation, has spoken on camera since the sub’s disappearance.
Suleman enjoyed watching movies, reading science fiction books, and playing volleyball. And “he loved his father” and showed interest in the things Shahzada enjoyed, his mother Christine said.
Suleman was adept at solving Rubik’s Cubes and taught himself by watching YouTube videos, his mother said. He could solve one in just 12 seconds, she said. According to Guinness World Records, the fastest average time to solve a rotating 3x3x3 puzzle cube is 4.48 seconds.
Christine said that Suleman once so impressed an airport security guard with the speed with which he solved the Rubik’s Cube that the security guard put him and his family at the front of the check-in line. The guard “said, ‘Go, because that’s impressive,'” Christine recalls.
Titan submersible crashed into exotic, dangerous world en route to Titanic
To honor Suleman’s memory, Christine said that she and her daughter plan to “watch every single movie he liked.” Christine said she also plans to continue her husband’s work. Shahzada was vice chairman of Pakistani conglomerate Engro Corp., which has a mix of industry interests including fertilisers, textiles and food.
Andrea Salcedo, Maham Javaid, Justine McDaniel, Marisa Iati, Bryan Pietsch, and Adela Suliman contributed to this report.
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