THE RIPPLE EFFECT
Where are we now
This Sunday marks one year since the Christchurch mosque shootings — the worst terror attack on New Zealand soil.
In a five-chapter series, Herald senior journalist Kurt Bayer investigates the tragedy and its aftermath.
In today’s final chapter, Bayer catches up with some of the victims of March 15 and those close to the scene as they reflect on that day — and look to the future with hope and faith.
Most Fridays, Asma Suhail makes the trip. She’s been driving for less than a year, but is getting more confident behind the wheel every week. Crossing town, from her townhouse at Addington, bumping over the sometimes quake-rippled streets, she parks at the cemetery. Often she meets others here, where 43 martyrs lie.
Sitting on sun-scorched grass battling to stay lush in these warm summer winds, Asma talks to her late husband, Suhail Shahid. She tells him the latest news. Coronavirus. How the two girls are doing. Whether little Nayira, now 3, is still asking, “Mama, where's Baba?” Or if big sister Wajiha, 6, still cries for him at night.
“It makes me feel good,” Asma says. “It’s like talking to a dear friend.”
She’d like to ask him the Netflix password, though. She was locked out of the account months ago. They used to love curling up on the couch and watching the latest Pakistan serial dramas and laughing at the larger-thanlife characters. These days, she’s starting to watch TV again, but no news programmes. There are too many triggers, mainlines to painful reminders and trauma.
Asma tells him his brother Naveed has finally found a good job and moved to Invercargill. He’d uplifted his family from Sydney days after March 15 to help support his grieving sister-in-law and two nieces. When he arrived in Addington hours after his younger brother Suhail was gunned down along with 41 other Muslim worshippers at Al Noor Mosque, she was shattered. “What will happen to me and my kids now?” she wept.
That night, Naveed made up his mind. “I knew I could not go back to Australia. It was obvious if I left, she would not survive,” he says.
Asma had to stay busy. She learned to drive and passed her test. Suhail, like many Muslim men, had done much of the household finances and accounts.
She had to learn everything. A trained pharmacy technician in Lahore, before they moved to Auckland in 2017, she’s now back at university, converting her skills so she can work here.
In November, she took the girls back to Lahore, the sprawling old Sikh Empire capital with its landmark mosques, for a much-needed “break from this environment”. Nayira and Wajiha, who speak good Urdu, loved it. They went to parks and zoos, meeting aunties and uncles. They attended weddings and relished dressing up in glitzy traditional attire.
“They were really happy and so that made me feel happy,” Asma said.
She asked a beaming Wajiha if she wanted them to stay in Lahore. “No Mama”, she wanted to return to Christchurch. “It is my home,” she told her relieved mother.
Asma and Naveed feel an “emotional attachment” to New Zealand. Suhail is buried in the loamy sand, lying facing Mecca — 14 degrees west of north — at Memorial Park Cemetery in Linwood.
“I want to stay here because Suhail is here.”
Asma Suhail wasn’t the only one keen to get away for a while. Like so many others caught up in the bloody vortex of March 15, painful, stark reminders were everywhere. So when the King of Saudi Arabia offered to stump the $1 millionplus bill for hundreds of victims’ relatives and survivors to participate in the Hajj, the holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, they leaped at the chance.
All able-bodied Muslims are required to perform the Hajj once in their lifetime; many save for years to make the journey. The annual pilgrimage draws nearly two million Muslims from around the world to perform a series of ancient rites and prayers meant to cleanse the soul of past sins and bring people closer to God.
Temel Atacocugu, shot nine times at Al Noor, was among those who travelled to Saudi Arabia as guests of King Salman. The kebab shop owner, who thought he was going to die after being shot in the face, left arm, legs and hips, felt the trip helped with the long physical, mental and spiritual healing process.
For Farid Ahmed and his daughter Shifa, a year without his wife Husna has been hard, sad, dark. It’s passed fast, but at times felt excruciatingly slow. They are determined not to let grief, fear or hate overwhelm them.
“I can’t describe the pain and agony we have been going through. It was a tragedy that shocked us terribly and changed our lives dramatically,” Farid says. “Life will never be the same, but life is moving on like the saying, ‘ Time and tide waits for none’. Our life journey is like waves in the ocean, they never stop moving.”
And like many others, he’s tried to keep himself busy. That’s meant many speaking events, in New Zealand and abroad, promoting peace and teaching about Islam.
In July, Farid was invited to Washington as part of a group of 27 survivors of religious persecution from around the world, including people from China, Myanmar, Iran, Turkey and North Korea. US President Donald Trump welcomed the “very important group of people” in the Oval Office and Farid took his opportunity.
“Mr President, thank you from New Zealand,” he broke in. “Thank you for your leadership, standing up for humanity, standing up for religious groups and their rights and thank you for supporting us after the March 15 tragedy in Christchurch. God bless you, and God bless the United States.”
Trump replied: “Thank you very much. You went through a lot. I know all about what happened and that was a terrible situation.”
Over the past year, Farid has also
found solace in writing a book. Husna’s Story – My Wife, the Christchurch Massacre and My Journey to Forgiveness,
published this month. Royalties from sales will go to St John Ambulance.
Farid started thinking about writing three days after Husna died.
“On March 15, 2019, my wife and many others were victims of hate,” he says. “I wanted to do the opposite, with love and forgiveness in return. I wanted to spread the message of love and peace.”
Len Peneha didn’t go far but he had to move. Every night he drove home from work, he saw her. The woman gunned down at the end of his driveway. He would apologise to her as he drove over her. It was too much to bear.
For weeks after the massacre where he helped fleeing Muslims over the wall between the mosque and his townhouse, he suffered flashbacks. Nightmares. More panic attacks. One night as he walked home along Deans Ave, he “freaked out” and thought every passing car contained a potential gunman. He ducked into driveways to hide. When got nearer Al Noor, he spooked a police officer guarding the mosque and was lucky his son spotted him and took him inside.
Counselling has helped. And having his kids around. But he had to relocate.
On the day he left, instead of saying sorry to the dead woman, he said goodbye. “And that was a big relief for my own mental health, to be honest.”
Since the move, he’s felt better and has recovered well. He’s back to his old good-natured self-effacing self. Of the five people he sheltered inside his apartment during the shooting, he’s met three of them. One elderly man turned up on his doorstep with chocolates. He cried in Peneha’s arms and sobbed, “Thank you, thank you.”
“That was amazing. It gave me the greatest feeling. It really reinforces the point that I did help. So I’m grateful,” Peneha says.
He feels changed by the experience, and doesn’t sweat the little things any more. “That perspective has changed a lot,” he thinks.
“The small stuff can lead to bigger issues and I just let it go. It’s meaningless. It’s rather selfish, really. At least you’re alive.”
In August, a wee baby girl born in Christchurch was named in memory of the father she will never meet.
Noor e Omar — the first child of shooting victims to be born since the attack — was named after Mohammad Omar Faruk and the city mosque Masjid Al Noor where he was shot dead on March 15.
“This girl is very special,” says a University of Canterbury PhD student who has taken in 20-year-old mother Sanjida Jaman Neha and another Bangladeshi widow since the tragedy.
“Neha remained very upset throughout her delivery time and kept crying for Omar. New Zealand owes a lot to this little one.”
The two “country cops” who nailed the suspected gunman. Those first Armed Offenders Squad boys who stormed into Al Noor, stepping over dead bodies, not knowing what lay in store for them. The off-duty cops who pitched in for days on end without question. Police Commissioner Mike Bush, the big boss, loves them all.
“I will never be more proud of police and emergency services as to how they put their lives on the line to save and help others in their absolute time of need,” he says, looking back on New Zealand’s darkest day.
Bush is haunted like the rest of them. He saw the shooter’s livestream footage. The realtime horrors, its bloody aftermath. Images, he knows, will stay with him forever.
“Nothing will take away from me what those people had to go through,” Bush says.
“What’s stayed with me most was the images of how those people were suffering . . . And how important it was for their police service and other emergency services to respond in a way that kept them safe and prevented any more harm coming to them.”
But the tragedy also fuels Bush and his fellow police officers, and colleagues in the security agencies, to prevent anything like March 15 from ever happening again in New Zealand.
“I think it’s probably changed all of us. We saw things we never want to see again and it made me particularly more determined to ensure that everything our organisation does is about preventing harm in the community, knowing what the consequences could look like if we don't get it right.”
Rahimi Ahmad watches his son playing on the lounge floor. Razif, now 12, has been beavering away for hours. An endless happy hum of chatter, song and giggles as he pieces together an intricate cardboard kit-set of Kuala Lumpur’s twin skyscrapers, the Petronas Towers, reeling off facts: “They’re 452m high. Officially opened on Malaysian National Day in 1999. Did you know they were the tallest buildings in the world for six years?”
Rahimi, 40, offers advice from the couch while wife Azila rustles up coconut rice with anchovies in the kitchen. He sits and folds clothes, wishing desperately he could be ground-level, helping, but he’s unable yet to crouch down on the carpet.
Savage pain still shoots down his right side, from above his hip where the bullet entered, and down the right leg to his foot. Some bullet fragments are too close to his spinal cord to safely remove and will probably stay inside him forever. He still endures appointments – physio, gym, occupational therapy, acupuncture, swimming – every week. More surgery is likely.
At least Razif is happy, Rahimi thinks. They were so worried about his mental health after the shootings, where he escaped on his own, clambering over the mosque’s back wall and running away. For so long, he was quiet, not wanting to talk about it. But the four-month trip back to Malaysia at the tail end of last year helped. He was the gregarious Razif of old. Rahimi reacted well to some traditional herbal treatments too. They’re leaning on their strong faith and tightknit loving family unit. They’re getting there.
Azila, who graduated with a PhD in electrical engineering the day before the shootings, has put her career on hold to care for her husband.
And a return to work is still some way off for service technician Rahimi. He’s desperate to return to his old routines and habits, but for now he still needs crutches or a walking frame, with a brace on his ankle, to get about. He’s making progress, but it’s slow.
“Yesterday the pain came again in the toes,” he says.
“It feels like an open wound and someone is pouring hot water into it. I try to use my fingernails to massage and reduce the pain. If it gets really bad, I’ll take the medicine. And the numbness is like ... zzzz zzzz zzz. If I’m chatting, I can forget about it. But at night, in bed, it can be hard.”
But the best rehabilitation for Rahimi is being home, around his wife and two children.
“We chit-chat together and have very good food together, we share everything – it’s what we always do. Because of their support I can eliminate the pain from my body. The mental support from them is very big for me to challenge myself on my real pain.”
A bright green Orbiter bus rattles along Linwood Ave with a big rear-end sign: “Something big is coming”. An ordinary piece of benign advertising but when it’s flashing past a mosque where nine people were slaughtered it feels somehow sinister and gut-gurgling.
It’s a welcome cooler January day today after a sweltering summer fortnight.
Lazy flies divebomb worshippers, who sit cross-legged, hugging knees, on the new cushioned carpet and its brown leafy patterns.
The eyes of a new high-tech security system perch upon high from the fresh white walls. A bold light pours in through the replaced windows that were smashed by bullets where Sister Linda Armstrong sat up the back, resting her dodgy knees. A helicopter passes overhead. Squawking, wailing seagulls circle. From Sister Linda’s old spot, you can see into the carpark to the southern side of the masjid, where the gunman crept. Footsteps of latecomers crunch on the gravel, leaving their shoes at the door beside wilting tribute flowers and fading messages of aroha.
Abdul Aziz, the Eftpos card-reader hero, got here early and did the vacuuming and tidying up. After checking the sound system, he stands back and surveys the masjid.
“It’s okay,” he says, wiping his brow and re-tightening his trademark ponytail. “We are okay. It is taking time, but we are getting there, getting better . . . slowly.”
Fewer than 20 Muslims are inside the masjid when Friday prayer begins. They’re still arriving at its end, filling up to more than 60. Imam Alabi Lateef Zirullah, the bulky Nigerian-born Islamic scholar, dashing in his white robe and dark crochet-knitted skullcap, sits on the bottom step of his wooden minbar.
Certain things in life destroy everything, Alabi says. They split friends, brothers and sisters, societies. They can start minor but end worse than we can imagine.
“And one of them is not forgiving,” he says.
“Nothing good can come from that. Getting angry opens the door to dark things. It will solve no problems.”
Worshippers, dressed in jeans, grey trackies and traditional robes, fidget and twitch. Nine months on and it’s still a nervy experience to be here. Eyes flit like starlings as tyres scrunch on carpark stones outside. The patrolling police presence, omnipresent for many months after the tragedy, is gone. Yet it’s a welcoming place.
Ali Elliot Marshall Dawson, who survived the massacre by hiding in the washroom and is dealing with his trauma by writing poetry, is kneeling up front, where he likes it, closer to Allah.
In the distance, a police siren wails. There’s a sudden shout from the street. “Zero plus zero will always be zero,” Imam Alabi says. “Two wrongs will never make a right.” Anger has no place in society, or in a Muslim’s life, he reminds his people. You can feel the brotherhood here, the love inside the room, between these sorrowful walls. It emanates out, through the replaced windows, into the blue Canterbury sky, wispy with thin passing clouds.