Shooting survivor: I forgive him
As a gunman stormed into the Al Noor Mosque firing indiscriminately at worshippers, Husna Ahmed had one priority — getting the women and children to safety.
“Hold your children, come this way,” she screamed as she led the group out a side door and through a gate away from the storm of bullets and carnage behind them.
Husna turned back to help her wheelchair-bound husband, Farid. As she made her way back into the mosque, she was shot from behind.
Inside, Farid thought he was the one who would be killed. “It was a horrible scene . . . I saw blood, I saw people injured, I saw dead bodies, people in panic,” he said yesterday.
“Mentally, I prepared myself, I told myself to calm down and there was no point panicking — whatever will happen will happen.”
Farid then saw a gap in the crowd and tried to wheel himself out.
“I was expecting that any moment I would be shot in my head from the back. I gently came out further and got outside . . . my car was parked behind the mosque and I just went behind it and decided to stay there.”
Farid watched out for the women and children. He was confident his wife would have stepped up to lead them out, that they would be safe.
But she was lying dead on the other side of the mosque.
“I could not see [the gunman] but I could hear him . . . I could hear the shooting stopped for a few seconds and started again and I thought he was probably changing magazines, he did that about seven times. “He just kept going.”
After about 10 minutes Farid was sure the shooting was over. He and another worshipper decided to go back inside. “It was probably a stupid thing to do, but I could not think any other way at the time. I wanted to check the ladies — and my wife.”
Farid is a senior member of the mosque and for almost three years he gave sermons so he knew almost every face in that room — the dead, the dying, the injured.
He spoke to them, reassured them, helped where he could.
“Then the police came into the room and yelled at me ‘what are you doing in here’ and they took me out.”
It wasn’t long before a policeman friend called him as he waited at the cordon. He had seen Husna’s body. Once home Farid broke the news to his 15-year-old daughter, Shifa.
“The worst part was when she said — are you telling me I don’t have any mother?” he said, dissolving in tears.
“I said yes . . . But I’m your mother now . . . and together we’ll face this.”
Farid was proud of his wife, who spent most of her life working as a volunteer in the community and taught children at the mosque.
“She gave her life to save other people and that was her last work.” They’d been married for 24 years. Farid is determined not to let the attack destroy his life.
“There is no need for anger — anger and fighting doesn’t fix anything, but through love and care we can warm hearts.
“We should do that.”