Mosque survivor’s police

After Mustafa Boztas was shot in the March 15 terror attacks he decided to dedicate his life to becoming a police officer to help others. But his dream has suffered a setback, after police told him he was medically unfit because of the trauma of the shoot

When a bullet hit his leg inside the AlNoor mosque on March 15, Mustafa Boztas sank to the floor. Others fell on top of him. The then 21-year old lay still and pretended to be dead while he heard screaming and shooting.

‘‘I’m in the best place to go to heaven,’’ the engineering student from Turkey thought in that moment, feeling very calm. He had only moved to Christchurch from Dunedin six weeks prior to the terrorist attack and almost skipped the Friday prayer because he was ‘‘feeling lazy’’. It had been a long day at the welding academy.

When he finally got up, he managed to break through a window that had a bullet hole in it, cutting his hand badly. Once outside, he saw a ladder leaning against a wall. He climbed over it, fell down the other side and hurt his shoulder as well.

‘‘I didn’t feel any pain until I escaped and ran,’’ Boztas says in an upcoming documentary chronicling his mission to become a policeman.

Outside the mosque, he saw a dying boy lying next to a car. The boy was still holding a cell phone. Boztas attempted CPR on him but couldn’t save him. He closed the boy’s eyes and then talked over the phone to the boy’s mother, a Syrian refugee whose husband was also shot dead.

Boztas couldn’t move any more, he had lost a lot of blood. While he was waiting for the ambulance – he was the last one to be transported to Christchurch Hospital – an officer from the Armed Offender’s Squad named Mark sat with him for an hour. ‘‘He was telling me it was going to be all good, it was going to be fine. He wrapped up my leg and he was there the whole time with me. I just saw so much love and how he was trying to help me to stay awake.’’

Finally, other police officers arrived, got Boztas up on their shoulders and dragged him to the ambulance. ‘‘It’s something that I will remember forever.’’

Not only is this hour after the attack ingrained in his memory – it also changed his career path. While Boztas was lying in hospital, undergoing operations to remove the bullet that had travelled up towards the liver, he thought ‘‘really, really hard’’. ‘‘Do I want to go back to study – or serve my community?’’

That community is Dunedin, where he has been living with his family for 11 years after immigrating from Turkey. But he had a long way to go.

When he was in hospital, the mother of the dead Syrian boy – Hamza Mustafa – visited him. Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdog˘ an called him on the phone. Prince William and Sonny Bill Williams came to his bedside when they visited the ward. And then one day, while he was facing towards the window in his wheelchair, someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind.

‘‘I looked on my left side and I saw the prime minister in a scarf, and I started tearing down. We had a good chat, she was a really supportive person, really lovely.’’

Before she left, Jacinda Ardern hugged him ‘‘like a mother’’.

In the first couple of weeks, he was ‘‘not in a good head space’’. He got angry easily and had nightmares. What helped his trauma recovery was praying. Boztas often watched the Koran on YouTube.

After three weeks, he was transferred back to Dunedin. His parents didn’t have to do the long drive back and forth any more, but now he was missing the other survivors on his ward in Christchurch and felt lonely. A piece of shrapnel had stayed in his body, causing him pain.

He developed a thrombosis in a vein on his leg. Then there was a scare that the shrapnel could lead to lead poisoning but his blood tests showed that he was below the toxic level.

Before the shooting, Boztas was able to benchpress about 110kg. ‘‘It got me down a bit when I found out that I lost 10kg from lying down on a bed,’’ he says.

At first, the physio exercises were light weight, but soon he was squatting and lifting again. ‘‘It’s a huge motivation for me to go to the gym more and get back to where I was.’’

He soon had a bigger goal to get his strength back: the upcoming test to join the police training as a prerequisite for college.

After two months, as soon as he was discharged from the hospital, Boztas went back to his gym routine and hot yoga classes, even though some movements were difficult. Besides seeing a physio and a counsellor for his recovery, he joined the local fitness training with the police: running, cardio, sprinting, press-ups, grip strength, vertical jumps – twice a week. On Saturday mornings, he would run 5km at the Botanic Garden.

Later in August, Boztas went to Saudi Arabia with other Christchurch survivors and bereaved victims to do the Hajj, the pilgrimage to the Great Mosque of Mecca. It was the most memorable trip of his life, a Muslim’s dream – and a big turn-around for him. ‘‘I asked for wellbeing, physically and mentally. I asked for forgiveness. Now I pray five times a day and focus on life. My religion has made me become even closer to the one who created me.’’

His religious reawakening gave him a greater

‘‘I’m as free as how I was before. I go on the street, I go to the gym, without worry. When I think about death, I don’t have fear. I’ve been there.’’ Mustafa Boztas