The threads that come together on day of mourning
HOW will I remember Friday, March 15, 2019? There was that big storm on the Gold Coast the night before. I was due to leave on Friday for a weekend with my daughter in Sydney.
Coolangatta airport departures was packed with hundreds of travellers disrupted by the storm. It became apparent that the 10:50am flight was not leaving on time and impatient travellers forgot their manners and any idea of a queue. I shared a comment with the gentlemen beside me and we laughed when we discovered we were both ‘rule followers.’
When we finally boarded at about 11:30am, this gentleman was assigned the seat beside me. We introduced ourselves and Ahmed and I spent the one-hour flight in lively conversation.
Ahmed was raised in Saudi Arabia, where his parents still live, but he has made his home in Dubai with his wife and two young sons. He had been on the Gold Coast at a conference and was heading home, transiting through Sydney.
He told me how his room at the Marriott faced the ocean and, at the peak of the storm, he contacted reception and asked whether they had plans for an evacuation! Our conversation ranged from extreme weather events in Australia to our world views. I discovered I was a year older than Ahmed’s mother.
I told him how, even though Australia is a majority Christian county, more and more Christian born young Australians were identifying as agnostic or atheist. He also felt that many Muslims, while having been born into the faith, lived agnostic lives.
We shared family photos and I will remember his beautiful wife and two boys with a smile. I heard how one sister studies medicine in New York and aspires to be a surgeon, while his youngest sister is enjoying her new-found right to drive in Saudi Arabia. I listened as he described his journey with his oldest son’s initial struggles in school and I shared my experiences with my son’s struggles at school and tried hard not to package it as ‘advice’.
We parted ways in Sydney, agreeing that when Ahmed brought his family to show them Australia he would be in touch. I forgot my annoyance over my weekend away being curtailed by a weather event and left to meet my daughter filled with the warmth of humanity.
I now know that, as Ahmed and I boarded the plane to Sydney, a hideous atrocity was being perpetrated in Christchurch by an Australian. It took only one hour in conversation with Ahmed for me to discover that, while we were from very different cultures, we had so much to share and enjoy in each other’s life experiences. In that same hour in Christchurch, an Australian was committing a hate crime against Muslims at their place of worship. What would Ahmed think when he heard the news while at the international terminal, waiting to board the 4:00pm Emirates flight to Dubai?
No Australian will forget 15 March 2019, nor should we. I have decided that each and every 15th of March to come, I will start my day with a prayer for those who died in Christchurch through that act of terrorism, for those who survived with injuries I want to honour those who fell victim to yet another act of global terrorism but, in doing so, I will also remember Ahmed. The hour Ahmed and I shared – one-onone – is one tiny thread in the history of 15 March 2019.