Zara Mohammad

[Gundham]

Name: Zara Mohammad
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: Southwest Red Rock High School
Hobbies and Interests: Activism, debate club, student council, community outreach

Appearance: Zara stands at an average height of 5’6” and weighs a slight 115 pounds. She is one of the less athletic students at Red Rock, with little muscle tone or definition. Zara is of Bengali descent, with smooth, clear skin the color of strong black tea. She is conventionally very attractive, but she prefers to enhance her appearance with makeup whenever possible, and applies her cosmetics with militaristic discipline every morning. She has a delicate nose and a sleek, angular jawline, but her eyes are her most prominent feature – they’re deep brown, almost verging on black, and their gleam tends to amplify whatever passion she’s feeling at the moment. Her fringe of long, dark lashes rarely require the enhancement of mascara or eyeliner, a fact of which Zara is quite proud. Her hair is a tangle of glossy black, falling a little ways below her shoulders. She commonly wears it tied back into a ponytail, and will stop everything and readjust it if any strands slip free.

Zara's sense of fashion is somewhat understated – while she prefers to dress nicely, her clothes tend to be hand-me-downs from her wealthier cousins and a few months out of date. She is also highly modest and conservative in her choices; her sleeves usually go to the wrist, and her torso is always covered from neck to hips. Zara usually pairs light-toned pants or jeans with fashionable long-sleeved tops in deep red or purple, with pastel-colored socks and sneakers. She occasionally accessorizes with necklaces or bracelets. She wears a small gold earring in each ear.

On the day of the abduction, Zara was wearing a maroon tank top under a long-sleeved purple space-dyed top, beige pants, white ankle socks, and white Converse sneakers. She had a thin gold necklace around her neck and small gold piercings in each ear.

Biography: Zara Fahim Mohammad is the only child of Mohammad Syed and his wife, Faiza. Mohammad is a Muslim from a relatively well-off area of Dhaka, the eldest of three brothers. He received an MBBS from Dhaka National Medical College in 1994, and, at his father’s urging, went on to pursue further education in America. While studying at the University of Nevada for a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, he happened to meet Faiza Fahim, a second-generation Bengali-American five years his junior. The two were immediately attracted to each other, and married, with both families’ blessings, in 1996. Faiza took Mohammad's last name. They settled into a small apartment in the outskirts of Las Vegas while Mohammad continued his studies, completing the chemistry degree and advancing into medical school; he would be granted citizenship in early 2001.

The following years turned out to be deeply turbulent; widespread public sentiment against Muslims piled stress onto Mohammad’s already precarious situation. He proved unable to meet requirements for ECFMG certification in his third year, effectively ending his medical career in America and forcing him to work a series of low-paying jobs. The couple’s savings took another significant hit in 2005, when Faiza became pregnant. It was an unusual pregnancy, not helped by Faiza already entering her thirties. Initial ultrasound images showed twins, but after a few months, only one heartbeat was detected. The pregnancy was difficult and traumatic from then on, and Faiza was frequently ill throughout. Zara was born two weeks past due, on November 5th, 2006. Faiza experienced significant distress during the procedure, and doctors determined that she would be unable to have any more children.

Despite their circumstances, Zara’s parents were attentive and caring parents. Mohammad worked a series of odd jobs, while Faiza stayed home to raise Zara. Zara was a happy child, but a clever one, and would often get into mischief if left unsupervised. She particularly enjoyed playing with puzzles and building blocks. Zara was raised speaking both Bengali and English, and still considers English her first language today, and speaks without an accent. She speaks Bengali when among relatives. The family is broadly Muslim, culturally, but are not practicing and do not consider themselves particularly devout.

When Zara was four, her parents sponsored her uncle Omar, along with his wife and their four children, to emigrate to America. The two families moved into a larger apartment, which still made for relatively cramped quarters. This arrangement persisted for several years while Omar’s citizenship was processed, with Mohammad serving as the major breadwinner for the family.

This living situation soon became rather strained. Omar and his wife took a lot of pride in their large family, and were known to express a smug sympathy towards Mohammad and Faiza for having had children so late in life, leaving them only one child - and a daughter, at that. Additionally, Zara was forced to share a room with her much older cousins, who considered her a child and showed little interest in her. She did, however, develop a strong kinship with her youngest cousin, Ormul. Ormul was Zara’s junior by a month, and considerably younger than his own siblings. The two got along very well, but were prone to occasional heated disputes; Zara possessed a strong competitive streak, and would go to great lengths to win games and disputes, exploiting loopholes in rules to get advantages wherever she could. She often achieved victory by sheer attrition when Ormul or her cousins grew too frustrated to continue arguing with her.

This competitive drive benefited Zara immensely throughout elementary school. She was a bright student who picked up new concepts quickly, and proved to be sociable and confident. She quickly mastered the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Her successes were, in no small part, motivated by the fact that she and Ormul had been placed in the same class. She enjoyed presenting her tests and homework to her parents, every score just a little bit higher than her cousin’s. While she never excluded Ormul from her friend circle, he often chose to remain distant, not wanting to be seen as “girly” or weak for associating too closely with her.

Before she entered junior high, two significant events altered the trajectory of Zara’s life. The first came in 2016, when Jarod Canon was elected President of the United States on Zara’s tenth birthday. The election, and the roiling uncertainty it brought with it, set the entire family on edge. Arguments were more common, particularly between Mohammad and Omar, and the relationship between Zara and her older cousins grew diffident, though not overtly hostile. Zara found herself with many questions about Canon, but few answers from her politically-averse parents. She began reading online newspapers regularly; most of the words and concepts went over her head at the start, but as she entered junior high, Zara made a point of looking things up or asking questions to her teachers. She has continued this practice ever since, and always takes a moment to browse Ground News at least once a day – usually on her way to school or during breaks.

In 2017, Uncle Omar, who had studied computer programming in college, leveraged his skills to become a developer. He took a high-paying job working with proprietary engagement monitoring software for casinos on the Vegas trip and moved his family into an upscale apartment downtown. As a matter of familial courtesy, Omar offered to find an industry job for Mohammad. Mohammad turned the offer down; his pride would never allow him to accept a handout from his younger brother, and he detested the debauchery of the strip; instead he enrolled in night classes, and began studying to become a pharmacist.

Zara soon found her family group texts flooded with pictures of her cousins enjoying trips, nice clothes, and new electronics; she would see their new riches firsthand whenever the families got together for holidays or regular visits. Every time, she would come away with a number of profound and complicated emotions. It felt viscerally unfair to see Omar flourishing in the casino business while her father’s career lagged behind, and to see her cousins enjoying things she didn’t have.

These feelings would only worsen when Zara was thirteen. Both Zara’s family and Omar’s were invited to spend a summer in Dhaka with her middle uncle Amit, who had stayed to take over the family printing business. Amit now lived in an expensive estate, with a full complement of household staff. While touring around the city, Zara observed Dhaka’s social stratification, and the stark contrast between her uncle’s gated house and the poorer areas nearby. She found herself horrified by the conditions in which less fortunate individuals were living and working. One evening, Zara overheard her father’s brothers drunkenly telling him how unfortunate he was not to have had any sons who could provide for him in his old age. Mohammad made only a token effort to dispute this, and when Zara’s uncles continued by saying that Zara at least had value insofar as she was pretty enough to be married into a decent family, he said nothing at all. Zara went to bed feeling enraged and ashamed; she spent the remainder of her summer in deep thought, and when she returned home she began drafting up her Ultimate Life Plan.

The Ultimate Life Plan remains a work in progress and has gone through several iterations. The most current edition involves securing a position as a casino lawyer, first via a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Economics at UNLV, then the Boyd School of Law for her JD and an LLM in Gaming Law and Regulation. Zara believes that this career path will enable her to enrich herself and be financially independent, while profiting off of an endlessly renewable resource: the greed and boredom of the rich. Once she’s financially established and makes a name for herself, she intends to seek out political office, or otherwise ally herself with an enduring political dynasty. All of this will hypothetically allow her to achieve her ultimate end goal: buying out both of her uncles’ residences and bulldozing them.

In pursuit of the Ultimate Life Plan, Zara began researching skills that would come in handy for her career goals. In junior high, Zara sought out and secured a position on the debate team, in order to improve her argumentation and persuasion. She was surprised to find that she genuinely enjoyed debate in its own right. She liked both the careful research beforehand and the quick thinking and improvisation necessary to compete in the moment. She pursued debate into high school and still enjoys it as a way of burning off her competitive drive.

Zara’s junior high had a voluntary-participation student council. She joined in her second year, and threw herself headlong into organizing and fundraising whenever needed. She was particularly successful at organizing an anti-bullying campaign after an incident where a classmate was hospitalized after being attacked by a group of delinquents. She enjoys making connections with local leadership wherever possible, and has continued running for student council every year of high school. She has organized various fundraisers and student events, and sometimes participates in local protests or marches. However, she is careful to select populist causes that will not be overly controversial.

Zara gets along well with her parents, and shows them a decent degree of deference. She does, however, feel that they are too idealistic, and does not believe that hard work and merit are sufficient to achieve her aspirations. Zara is less adherent to her faith than her parents, she tends to follow the general moral principles of Islam, but is willing to put them aside whenever she deems it necessary. Mohammad, now a full-fledged pharmacist, is occasionally overbearing. He texts Zara frequently when she's out in the evening, and strictly enforces a 10 PM curfew. Faiza is unwell a lot of the time, and tends to enlist Zara's help with cooking and household chores whenever she happens to be home. Other than this, the family do not interact much, as Zara's extracurricular activities keep her out of the house a lot, or in her room studying. Zara gets along well with her extended family as well, and maintains social media contact with her cousins in both Dhaka and Vegas. Zara is particularly close with Ormul as of the last few years; Ormul is gay, and Zara is one of the few people he has come out to. He and Zara occasionally coordinate and provide cover for one another when they need a handy excuse to get out of the house. Zara's older female cousins have been more amicable with her as she's grown older. They taught her much of what she knows about cosmetics, and will frequently gift her clothes that they no longer find fashionable.

Zara studies hard and gets excellent grades, and has thrown herself into a wide variety of extracurricular activities such as building homes with Habitat for Humanity and volunteering at the Three Square food bank. These activities do not leave her with much time for socializing, and Zara tends to be aloof towards those she doesn't have any specific reason to engage with. That said, Zara is not unfriendly, and tends to come off as uncaring or dismissive rather than malicious. She sees networking as equally important to her long-term goals, and has made an effort to befriend the wealthier students at Red Rock, such as the Prescott family scions. She spends as much time in their company as possible, having convinced her parents that she’s tutoring the rich kids in a variety of subjects. She is often willing to tag along with whatever the rich kids are doing, but demurely begs off drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol, and she avoids being photographed with them in most situations. She also maintains separate social media accounts for family and friends, as an additional security measure.

Zara has also gone on a few dates, on the grounds that romance is a developable skill like anything else. She is extremely careful to disguise this, as her parents have forbidden her from dating until she graduates. Zara usually skirts this rule by dating in a group setting, but has snuck out on occasional one-on-one dates. These relationships never last long. Zara does not enjoy lying to her parents and feels guilty for doing things she knows that they would not approve of, but views these as necessary evils that they will one day thank her for.

Zara has already begun enacting the Ultimate Life Plan, and has been accepted to UNLV starting in the fall. She considers the 2024 re-election of Jarod Canon as a strong affirmation of her end-justifies-the-means philosophy. While she loathes Canon and his supporters, she nonetheless sees them as valuable learning models for what can be accomplished through sheer ruthless ambition, and avidly reads up on the subject where possible.

Advantages: Zara is highly intelligent and capable of analyzing situations quickly. Her cold determination will allow her to make calculated choices, unburdened by emotion.
Disadvantages: Zara’s calculating, aloof nature will likely turn away potential allies. She is also not athletic, and will tire relatively quickly in fights she cannot escape or outwit.

[VoltTurtle]

Heya Gundham. You know the drill. DENIED, etc. Comments below.

Zara sense of fashion

Zara's sense of fashion.

only child of Mohammad

Just a given name, no family name? While I'm unfamiliar with the exact culture of Bangladesh, this still seems unusual. If you can point me to an example of a person like this in real life (not counting THE Mohammad) I'll let it pass, otherwise he's going to need a family/last name.

While studying University of Nevada

"Studying at the"

Zara was born two weeks past due, on November 5th, 2006

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Zara would actually be 19 at the time of the trip, given her birthday? Either that or she would have already graduated.

She would've started Kindergarten at 5 in 2012 and then turned 6 that year. Similarly, she'd turn 19 very early into her Senior year. Should be an easy fix.

though she speaks with a distinct accent

This wouldn't actually be true, as children raised entirely in the USA tend to speak like their peers. She might've had a distinct accent upon initially entering school, but would have lost it very quickly and gained the local accent.

This would be a different story if she moved to Vegas instead of being born there, but as it is she wouldn't have an accent any different from anyone else.

a full completement of

Complement.

that Zara least had value

At least.

married into to a decent family

Into a.

All of this will hypothetically allow her to achieve her ultimate end goal: buying out both of her uncles’ residences and bulldozing them.

Not necessarily a problem per say but I will point out that unless someone else actually owns the estate, Zara would just be giving money to her uncles that she hates, probably more money than the estates are even worth. She seems like a smart girl, so I imagine this has occurred to her, but if she's blinded by petty desires for vengeance and that's your intent then by all means, keep it as-is.


...that's all! Pretty simple. Post back here when you have those things fixed!

[Gundham]

I do, indeed, know the drill. We have crossed blades and bits many times over the years. Let us do battle one more time, for the soul of Las Vegas!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Zara would actually be 19 at the time of the trip, given her birthday? Either that or she would have already graduated.

She would've started Kindergarten at 5 in 2012 and then turned 6 that year. Similarly, she'd turn 19 very early into her Senior year. Should be an easy fix.

I did go through and double check the age range because I know that's been tripping up some things, and as far as I can tell if Zara's born in 2006 she will be 17 going into her senior year, and turn 18 during it. The school year cutoff is "you must be X age by August 1st of that year," so unless I'm misunderstand how that works, since Zara would be 17 on August 1st, 2024, that'd put her in 12th grade that year. (She'd also be 5 in the 2012 school year).

Not necessarily a problem per say but I will point out that unless someone else actually owns the estate, Zara would just be giving money to her uncles that she hates, probably more money than the estates are even worth. She seems like a smart girl, so I imagine this has occurred to her, but if she's blinded by petty desires for vengeance and that's your intent then by all means, keep it as-is.

Her desires are less about bankrupting her uncles than insulting them. She wants to have enough wealth to be able to afford to not only buy up the residences that they flaunted over her family, but to then immediately tear them down to show that she doesn't need them. They might wind up being enriched by her actions, but they'd come out of it suffering a substantial insult to their pride inflicted by a family member they did not value or respect, so Zara would still consider herself the victor anyway.

All other edits have been performed as requested.

[VoltTurtle]

I did go through and double check the age range because I know that's been tripping up some things, and as far as I can tell if Zara's born in 2006 she will be 17 going into her senior year, and turn 18 during it. The school year cutoff is "you must be X age by August 1st of that year," so unless I'm misunderstand how that works, since Zara would be 17 on August 1st, 2024, that'd put her in 12th grade that year. (She'd also be 5 in the 2012 school year).

I hate birthday math so much. You're right. This is why I never include years in my profile birthdays.

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