Quran bookshelf saved my life, says a suvivor

christchurch — As the bullets tore into worshippers during Friday prayers, taxi driver Abdul Kadir Ababora threw himself to the floor and wedged himself under a bookshelf used to hold the holy Qurans, praying he would see his wife and kids again.

Somehow that decision saved his life and he emerged from the carnage unscathed.

“It’s just a miracle,” he told AFP on Sunday as he revisited the scene. “When I woke up to the left and right of me it was just dead bodies.”

Like so many who attended weekly prayers at Christchurch’s Al Noor mosque, Ababora had come to New Zealand from a troubled overseas homeland hoping to find peace and prosperity.

The 48-year-old said he arrived from Ethiopia in 2010 and made a life for himself in the placid city of Canterbury.

Two weeks ago he and his wife celebrated the birth of their third son.

Then on Friday a self-professed white supremacist walked into the Al Noor mosque and unleashed a rampage that left at least 50 dead and dozens more with life-changing injuries.

Ababora said the mosque’s imam had just started delivering the English translation of the khutbah — the sermon during Friday prayers — when the gunfire erupted outside.

The first person he saw struck was a Palestinian, a man who was an engineer by training but who, like Abobora, also drove a taxi in the city. “He walked up just to see what is going on and then he saw the attacker. When he tried to run he shot him somewhere here,” Ababora recalled, pointing to his side.

“I saw him falling down.” Soon Brenton Tarrant, was inside the prayer hall, pumping round after round into the defenceless worshippers.

Ababora said he instinctively fell to the ground and managed to squeeze himself against a bookshelf that held the Quran worshippers used during prayers. Crucially, it made his body a slightly smaller target.

“I just pretended as if I am dead,” he said.

Ababora said he was sickened at how methodical the killer was, firing round after round into the crumpled pile of bodies in a wellplanned attack he later learned was broadcast on Facebook. “This guy started to shoot randomly, left and right, automatic. And then he finished the first box (magazine) and then he changed it, again automatic. Then he finished the second one, he put the third box, again start automatic in the other room again.”

He could feel the shockwaves from the bullets pass by his body.

“I was waiting (for) my moment, when every second (a) shot comes I was saying ‘This is for me. This is for me’. And I lost hope,” he said.

He began to silently pray and think of his family.

For an agonising number of minutes afterwards, no one at the Al Noor mosque dared make a sound. But as the pain got too much for the wounded, people started crying out.

A friend called out, saying he had been shot in the leg. He tried to help him up but the leg was shattered by the bullet.

Ababora staggered outside to find another worshipper alive but with horrific injuries. He had been shot in the jaw, his hand and his back. It was only after laying the man down he noticed two more bodies — two women lying in a pool of blood.

Like most of Christchurch’s inhabitants, Ababora said he never believed such hatred would arrive on his doorstep.

“We used to say New Zealand is safe, especially in Christchurch we say we are safe, it’s a trusting system here. The Muslims here, we are the most quiet people,” he said, adding: “New Zealand is not safe any more.” . “This is brutal,” he added.—

I was waiting (for) my moment, when every second (a) shot comes I was saying ‘This is for me. This is for me’. And I lost hope.

Abdul Kadir Ababora, A taxi driver