Kiwi response heart-warming
The wonderful sense of belonging, care, and support that I and all New Zealand Muslims have felt since Friday’s events cannot be expressed only in words; the manaakitanga, the aroha. On Friday when I watched the news, I struggled to hold back my tears. I felt helpless, scared for my family, numbed and I cried a lot.
On Saturday, before a meeting with fellow organisers of the Basin Reserve vigil solidarity on Sunday, I went to the Kilbirnie Mosque to grieve with other brothers and sisters. I arrived at the masjid with a mind full of questions and anger.
The mosque was on security ban but what I saw outside it warmed my heart.
Wellingtonians poured to the mosque in hundreds, if not in thousands, to show their love; they embraced their Muslim neighbours. Children as young as 3 were drawing love symbols on the footpath while adults and older people put flowers and cards around the masjid’s fence.
Most of all, the long squeeze hug of my fellow Wellingtonians made me remember the way my close relatives hugged me when I visited Ethiopia after many years, and how my daughter, now 6, hugged when she was 4.
The wider community’s unprecedented support has made me feel I am not just in New Zealand, but of New Zealand. And that this new feeling is shared by many other New Zealand Muslims. A true sense of being fully welcomed on to the marae that is New
Zealand, Aotearoa.
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