I – Mazhar
How we treat our dead says everything about how we choose to live.
Mazhar Syed Ahmed begins each new day with the same routine. Shortly before sunrise, he unrolls a prayer mat in his living room and lowers himself to the floor, his forehead, nose, hands, knees and toes all touching the ground.
He believes all fortunes – good or bad – are meted out. Almost seven years ago now, he moved to Christchurch from Saudi Arabia to study architecture. His family joined him six months later during the month of Ramadan. On that first evening, the family went to Al Noor Mosque, around the corner from their motel. The raised dome gleamed amber, even in the darkness. They performed Tarawih prayers and broke their fast. A job and a home soon came through connections to the mosque.
But Mazhar believes his fortune could turn at any time. Allah might have written something, he thinks to himself more often these days. If God wills it, I will die today.
He knows that Islamic law has specific protocols for what will happen to his body once his soul has departed it on that fateful day. To perform these rites for another is a great honour. The responsibility is even greater. You might see something during the ritual – a bruise, a cut, a wound. But injuries written on the body are never to be spoken about. “You talk only about the good you see in a dead body,” is practically the first thing he says about the death rituals. “It is unethical to share anything else.”
Mazhar’s nature is to be gently instructive. He also earns his living this way, teaching architecture at the Ara Institute of Canterbury. His architecture is green, buildings that practically breathe, armoured as they are with solar panels. The architecture school’s home, named Kahukura (Māori for “chiefly cloak”), has a patterned facade, symbolising the woven inner flax strands of a fine Māori cloak. It, too, harvests solar power. Right now, Mazhar is sitting deep within the cloak’s gentle wadding, on a break between classes.
He begins a demonstration: First, he lays a pen down to rest inside a tissue (the same tissue he wept into only moments before). Then he folds the tissue inwards over the pen, ensuring the sides overlap, while the ends at the top and bottom hang loose, allowing them to be tied easily.
“There is a body here,” he says.
There were 50 families, 50 exponential emotions. It was like you were a converging point for each one of those emotions.
MAZHAR
He is mimicking the Islamic process of shrouding a body, the kafan, which follows another burial rite, ghusl, during which a body is washed by close family members, or friends of the same sex. These religious rites happen on a tight schedule, with tradition calling for burial as early as possible. But, in the days after the mass shooting, the procedural clashed with the spiritual. How do you quickly bury the victims of a massacre, and still satisfy the demands of modern crime scene forensics?
The first bodies were released two days after the attacks. In some cases, the victim identification took longer than a week to complete. By this time the grief and agitation the families felt churned as one, while an army of volunteers mobilised to carry out their wishes.
Mazhar explains how the initial horror gave way to a nightmare of logistics. Among the dead were nationals from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, Mauritius, New Zealand, Palestine, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and eventually – when a 51st person died from his injuries in May – Turkey. “There were 50 families, 50 exponential emotions,” he remembers. “It was like you were a converging point for each one of those emotions.”
Mazhar’s wife Sarah plays scrabble with their son Umar, 11, at home [Ethan Donnell/Al Jazeera]
Mazhar, who is 48, is not much taller than the handlebars of the bike he rides. He possesses a nature both gracious and soft, and this has the effect of putting others around him at ease. Sarah, his wife, worried this same softness might leave him exposed during the task ahead. “He did a good thing, mashallah [God willed it].”
He worked alongside four coroners and three other cultural support staff at the funeral home. One operating table was kept free for embalming. The other tables were occupied with stitching, washing and shrouding. A body might spend as long as four hours on the table, depending on the extent of the damage. The room often smelled sweetly of camphor oil, misted onto each shroud.
On that day a year ago, Mazhar fled from the Linwood Islamic Centre to the architecture school, his shirt drenched with the blood of a friend whose wound he held, trying to stop the bleeding. On the bike ride over, he placed a call to his mother in Hyderabad, India. He left a voicemail: “You might hear something in the news. Don’t worry, I’m safe.” Though, as he pedalled, he felt like a living target.
The gunman had been standing right in front of him when his AR-15 style rifle clinked empty. Mazhar had been contorting his body, twisting, preparing to take the bullets.
In total, he was called to perform ghusl on 17 bodies. Such prolonged contact with the dead is not easy.
“Most of them you knew by their faces,” he says. “Some of them were smiling.”
II – Hasan
After Hasan Abdullah scaled the wall behind the Al Noor Mosque and scrambled to safety, he was handed a phone. He remembers the first question the police respondent on the other end asked him: What was the ethnicity of the shooter?
He gave a detailed description: white, male, strong build, military dress, bullet-proof vest, carrying a semi-automatic weapon. The voice on the other end did not seem to believe the shooter could be white. “I’m not trying to be racial here,” Hasan clarifies, “but that’s what happened when I had a conversation with the cops.”
Hasan prays at the Al Noor Mosque [Ethan Donnell/Al Jazeera]
Hasan remembers the respondent’s next question, too. How many people were shot? Certain images replayed in his mind. Several hundred worshippers gathered in orderly rows, only 10 minutes before. A tangle of limbs as they climbed over each other to escape. The men trapped defenceless in corners of the room, fired upon at point blank range. The bodies piling up.
“Fifty people,” he guessed.
Earlier that morning, the heavens had opened. If it was not for the rain, Hasan would have joined Friday prayers two hours away in Ashburton. He works as an account manager for a roofing company, meaning he commutes back and forth. But that morning he was calling clients from Christchurch, trying to close important deals over the phone, and waiting for the showers to pass.
Not such a bad turn of events, he thought to himself. At least Haniyah, his seven-year-old daughter, would relish the surprise when baba swooped her up from school that afternoon. There would now be time for batting practice before the sun set. She was still learning how to adopt a balanced batting stance, protecting her wicket. He would lob soft deliveries and his two-year-old son Yahya would toddle down the driveway to retrieve the ball. Ayesha would perch on the doorstep to watch, cradling Maryam, their six-month-old daughter.
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Shortly after 1pm, he hung up the phone and drove to Al Noor. He joined the second row just as the imam began giving the khutbah (sermon) in Arabic. A few minutes later, while the imam was repeating the khutbah in English, he heard a succession of loud, cracking noises. He turned to see a lone gunman, dressed like a commando. He remembers going stiff, not believing what was happening.
“I was waiting for my bullet, honestly,” he says. “I was half dead there. I was not expecting to get out alive.”
The men who saved Hasan departed this world before they did so – their limp bodies falling on top of him, shielding him; the blood dripping onto his hands still warm with the life that had left them. At first his face was uncovered. He repositioned himself while the gunman left to retrieve a third round, covering his head beneath the soft padding of someone’s stomach, and instead leaving his legs exposed.
A phone rang in a pocket as the gunman returned. He emptied eight more bullets into a corpse. In whichever direction he heard noises, he fired his shotgun.
Ayesha might have been calling Hasan, too. His phone was in the car, parked in front of the mosque.
The gunman had another weapon strapped to his head, a camera feeding live video of the mass shooting to the internet. Eventually, the shooting stopped, and soon after that the video feed dropped. Hasan escaped through a window. While the footage continues to be uploaded and removed from the internet – and anyone sharing copies prosecuted, at least in New Zealand – there are no such measures to expunge intrusive thoughts.
“I still hear the screams,” he says. “The people losing their lives, taking their last breath.”
He no longer feels like the person he was before, the man with a zest for life, always working towards his goals. He lies awake, cycling through those moments. Why did I survive when so many died? I could have done something. Why didn’t I stop the shooter?
He was prescribed sleeping pills and antidepressants, but worried they might become addictive. He tried speaking to a counsellor. She told him to confide in those around him, open up to friends and family. It is not that easy. He and his wife have discussed changing career paths, retraining in some kind of public service. She knows the broadest outline of what happened that day. Hasan does not want to share the burden beyond that. She has to look after the kids, he reasons to himself.
His children, at least, have kept him turned from the abyss, giving him strength to continue. He returned to work after a month, but returned to the mosque even sooner. He remembers the wreaths of flowers, small pebbles with koru patterns (a spiral shape based on the appearance of a new unfurling silver fern frond), and other messages of support.
Always he returns to the same spot, where he knelt in prayer that day. I must have survived for a reason, he will think to himself. He must have chosen me to do some good.
III – Rahimi
As Nor Azila Abd Wahid listened intently to the neurosurgeon one afternoon in January, she did not need much to be explained. The operation would connect an electrode through her husband’s spinal cord to his brain.
That much she understood.
A chip, embedded in his skin, could then be pushed like a button whenever the pain felt most intense. Or instead he could activate the trigger through an app on his phone. The chip would immediately stimulate his brain, inducing a level of pain relief – enough to help him sleep through the evening and even perhaps return to his job, as a robotic technician at a dairy company, during the day.
This implant would be a last resort. The possibilities to be explored before then are both limitless and narrow, mostly an ever-dizzying cocktail of painkillers. Ask her today, and she will sum up this vague prognosis in one phrase. “He might get it back, he might not.”
That is the unknowable part.
Even as the neurosurgeon assured them otherwise, the terms of the conversation had moved to managing pain, away from getting back on his feet.
Nor Azila’s husband, whose name is Rahimi Ahmad, sat beside her in a wheelchair, digesting the news.
Nor Azila’s own deeply specialised research is in a sister field of biomedical engineering. For the past few years, she has tested a new kind of biodegradable implant, one which would make the healing process for certain injuries less mysterious. The day before the shootings, she defended her PhD based on this research. This highly conductive implant, made from hydrogel and lyocell, would act like reconnaissance for broken bones, communicating information to doctors about the bone’s condition. Once the bone heals, the implant would simply biodegrade into the human body. “Without any toxicity at all,” she explains.
This is a major difference between her implant and the proposed brain stimulator chip. Rahimi’s implant would not be biodegradable. “It will be in the body forever,” she says before clarifying that a second operation to remove the implant might one day be necessary.
Since the shootings, her husband’s diet has been restricted along with his movement. Certain fruits and vegetables – such as those with high acid content like pears, limes, apples and mangos – seem to trigger a dislocating pain in his foot. No fruit or vegetable is worth that pain, he says.
Instead his wife has devised a revolving menu of white meat and other vegetables.
To Nor Azila, cooking represents many things. It is how she finds peace of mind; what she does to relieve stress after a long day at the lab. Though the New Zealand government has assisted the family financially, cooking is also a valuable income stream. Nor Azila runs a small catering business from the family’s cramped kitchen, preparing several hundred dishes at a time, mostly served to international students or Malaysian tourists. Her specialities are authentically Malaysian; dishes like briyani, chicken rendang, served alongside coconut rice, washed down with sugary tea and dainty kuih cakes for dessert.
“You have to put all your love into the food,” she says, “that’s what makes your cooking really nice.”
On March 15 last year, Nor Azila was preparing a big family lunch to celebrate completing her PhD. Her husband and their 11-year-old son, Ahmad Razif, were attending Friday prayers. A single bullet would enter her husband’s stomach, exploding on impact, leaving many tiny fragments scattered near his spine. “I celebrated my PhD in a different way,” she says. “In the hospital with him.”
Nor Azila barely left his side during the next six days while he was in a coma, and through four surgeries to remove pieces of shrapnel. Those remaining fragments are inoperable now. “They will also be in the body forever,” she says.
Meanwhile, Nor Azila’s mother travelled from Malaysia to look after their children, Ahmad and Nur Faiqah, the couple’s eight-year-old daughter.
Ahmad had been separated from his father during the shootings. Someone helped him over a wall into a neighbour’s garden. Rahimi’s first words after waking from his coma were: “Where’s Ahmad?” He could not believe his son had survived. Nor Azila brought the boy in to visit the next day as proof. But Rahimi noticed a change in him immediately: the previously wisecracking boy was almost mute. He refused to say a word about what had happened that day.
I still hear the screams. The people losing their lives, taking their last breath.
HASAN
Ahmad’s silence troubles Rahimi more than his own physical recovery. Towards the middle of last year the family returned to Malaysia for three months. Rahimi underwent a course of acupuncture and traditional Malay urut massage during that time, sponsored by the Malaysian government. This open-armed embrace was a reversal of kinds. Almost six years ago now, the family had moved to New Zealand for lack of alternatives after the Malaysian government was unable to support Nor Azila’s studies.
Still, Rahimi’s pain and dosage were reduced after this treatment. And being in Malaysia seemed to help Ahmad even more. The foods and familiar sights of childhood comforted him.
There were many fond memories for his parents, too. Rahimi and Nor Azila had first met as students, a courtship that withstood the passage of years as both studied towards qualifications. But not everything is bathed in such a warm glow. Nor Azila would have to rise in the predawn, an effort to beat the traffic crunch to work each morning. Heading out on foot in Bangi – a busy, metropolitan area just outside of Kuala Lumpur – was not an option.
“You wouldn’t walk,” says Rahimi.
IV – Tyrone
Today, Tyrone Smith has one foot firmly planted in each world. It was not always the case. If you want to know the whole story, the plot threads can be traced through the ink on his arm. Long before he converted to Islam 14 years ago, he was gritting his teeth while a crude, Greek-inspired tattoo – no more than a doodle – was chiselled onto his shoulder. Later, as a new convert during Hajj, the cries of “haram! haram! haram!” from fellow worshippers seemed to follow him wherever he went. “Can you tell them I’m a convert, and I had that done before I became a Muslim?” he told his friend.
Still he always wanted to have his whakapapa (genealogy) tattooed on his arm. He remembers even asking his teacher, who instructed him in Islam, whether a fatwa might allow for this. “No. It’s totally forbidden.”
Some years later, there was a period when his faith wavered. He left his prayers, stopped visiting the mosque. He blamed the local Muslim community at the time. Reflecting on those days now, he instead thinks the problem was himself. “I just wanted to go back to the world that I knew, the world that I came from. Go back to drinking, go back to the drugs.”
One day when his faith was at its lowest ebb, he decided to have his tā moko (traditional Māori tattoo) done anyway, adapted in secret over the top of the juvenile scribbling from his youth. “What on earth have you done?!” he remembers his wife, also a Māori convert to Islam, saying to him.
His tā moko spirals around his bicep, depicting the histories of his tūpuna and tīpuna (ancestors), and even incorporates tatau design elements (Samoan traditional tattoo) to honour his brother-in-law’s connection to Samoa.
What seemed like a contradiction does not seem that way now.
Tyrone was not at the mosque on the afternoon of March 15. He happened to be working when he got the call from a fellow convert, who was hiding behind a car. “There’s a white guy with an armoured vest. He’s shooting everyone, bro. Everybody dead. Hundreds of people dead, bro. Mum’s in there.” Sometimes Tyrone’s work life can feel like paths converging. He has worked in many different social contexts, most recently helping whanau (families) in vulnerable situations. This meant, fortunately, there was a trained trauma counsellor in the office to act as a guide while he comforted his friend over the phone. He remembers thinking later, what the hell is going on? What’s the mentality? Is this it? Does Armageddon begin today?
That evening, he was sitting with a few other Māori converts. Islam is estimated to be the fastest growing religion among Māori with more than 1,000 converts recorded during New Zealand’s last census, up from fewer than 100 just 20 years earlier. But the faith is still a small minority, only 0.19 percent of the overall Māori population.
Even as the men tried to comfort each other, a pall of anxiety settled over the room. Until another Muslim man, not a Māori convert, showed up with a box of beers. “I know this is haram, but you need to drink a beer or two. I don’t want you going home to your families and you’re not right in the head.” The alcohol took the edge off and rest came easier that night. There were to be many sleepless nights ahead.
The tapu (restriction) was lifted from the Linwood Islamic Centre eight days after the shootings. In this case, the tapu was both spiritual and physical: an apprehensive energy following the attack but also a literal police cordon that had prevented access. On that day, leadership from Ngāi Tahu and Ngāi Tūāhuriri tribes arrived to support the Muslim community. Two whole vanloads. “A lot of them didn’t have anything to do with our community before that, because of the cultural differences. But they showed up, sitting amongst us.” He remembers looking around, seeing kaumātua and kuia (Māori elders) on all sides. There was a karakia (Māori prayer used to invoke protection) and then the Linwood Islamic Centre was officially reopened.
He spoke to an elder from the Ratana movement. At one point, the man paused.
“Are you …?”
“Māori, cuz.”
“Kia ora, boy! I wasn’t sure. I looked at your arm and saw that tā moko.”
The words of one kaumātua stay with him.
“This is your whare (house), here on the whenua (land). But the whenua itself, that’s our responsibility. That belongs to us.”
V – Mazhar
The whare is set back from the street, down a long driveway. At prayer time, the Linwood Islamic Centre might simply seem modest against the incoming tide of colourful worshippers. Between prayers that same building can appear a little lonely, lost in a sea of granite. The vacant lot out front is a car park. The lot next door was once a fast food restaurant. The distinct curvature of a drive-through loops round its sides. Behind the former restaurant building is yet another car park.
The Linwood Islamic Centre has cycled through various states of renewal since first being established three years ago. The original location was a two-bedroom rental. One room, in fact, was still occupied by a renter at the time. A mattress would be shoved upright into a corner ahead of prayers. The numbers grew and grew, quickly outgrowing that first venue. The second location was a community hall in Philipstown. But within months the congregation outgrew that space, too. The mosque moved to its current premises, on the grounds of a former Baha’i community centre, in early 2018.
Those grounds might look rather different soon.
Months ago an anonymous funder from the United Arab Emirates gifted $1.1m to a third party, who then bought the surrounding lots of land on behalf of the Linwood Muslim community. The idea is to demolish the rundown community centre and build a new mosque – the central hub of a large multicultural centre. The same financier will also put up money for construction of the centre, pending delivery of a final design concept.
Now, if only all parties concerned could reach some agreement around that design.
It is a baking Friday afternoon in late February. Chaining his bike around back, Mazhar pauses to wipe the sweat from his brow. He is a little late, the imam is already giving the khutbah. The small prayer room is crammed to capacity, 60-odd people. Many peoples of the world are assembled in this throng, Pakeha (white New Zealanders) and Māori among them. Some wear traditional garb, including the keffiyeh headdress, though most are wearing Western clothes. Mazhar quickly goes through his ablutions, before tiptoeing into the room, finding a spot in the front row. He will apologise later for seeming distracted. “The emotional, spiritual and professional all blur when I come here now.”
In the year since the shootings, Mazhar notices he no longer experiences the same shades of emotion. Sometimes, in idle moments, he is gripped by uncontrollable anger. His response has been to work harder, do more. “God gives the courage,” he says, hand waving away his own trauma.
A memorial is a dead wall. It’s a static wall. You want something that gives back, something that rebuilds the community.
MAZHAR
The professional is still a recent addition. Over the last few months, Mazhar has spearheaded an ambitious plan to reimagine the Linwood Islamic Centre in New Zealand’s image. The design would unite Islam and te ao Māori (the Māori world), becoming a marae-mosque hybrid (a marae is a sacred place for New Zealand Māori and other Polynesian cultures).
According to Mazhar, Islam does not forbid an integrated design of this kind. “A mosque in Islam doesn’t have to be a particular shape, a particular arhitectural style. It should be orientated towards Mecca, and it should be clean enough to pray. That’s the only basic requirement.”
Ideally, this design would also meet the stringent criteria of the Living Building Challenge. This means the construction would follow sustainable building practices, use locally sourced timber to ensure a lower carbon footprint, and be constructed using local labour. The building would give, rather than consume, arrayed with thick solar panels, producing enough additional power to share with the surrounding neighbourhood.
In one artist’s impression, the curve of New Zealand’s native silver fern is integrated into the raised dome of the mosque. The tessellations of the fern are multicoloured, a tribute to the multiethnic diversity of the Christchurch Muslim community. The dome is surrounded by four tall minarets, each holding a wind turbine to harvest further power reserves.
But there are competing schools of thought, and powerful outside influences. A consultant architect has been appointed to the project at the funder’s request.
Mazhar worries the potential in this design may become flotsam in muddy waters. That a completely different design may find favour, one which disavows principles of sustainable design in favour of cheaper offshore building materials and labour from foreign workers. “I can’t understand why we don’t just generate the funds locally,” he says.
Large-scale architectural gestures still hold some imaginative power in Christchurch, a city that continues to measure its recovery since the 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people in terms of newly built structures rising up on its skyline.
In November, plans for a $9.5m memorial for those who died in the mosque shootings – in the form of an elaborate landscaped park and large ornamental water feature – were put on hold. While the proposal had initial support from the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ), other leaders in the local Muslim community labelled the proposal “obscene”.
Mazhar tends to agree. “A memorial is a dead wall,” he says. “It’s a static wall. You want something that gives back, something that rebuilds the community.”
“This building,” he says, referring to the marae-mosque, “should become that icon.”
VI – Tyrone
Tyrone has a few concerns. He does not shy away from emotion when expressing them. “I always explain it in simple language: If I steal your house, and then say I want to do God’s work there, do you think God will bless me?” he says. “After I’ve taken that from you?”
He refers to building on iwi land (tribal land) without consent. Stealing, in this context, would be not consulting the people of the land, otherwise known as mana whenua (the iwi or hapū who have traditional authority over land).
He sketches a map on the back of an envelope, dividing Christchurch into several zones over which different iwi have jurisdiction. It might as well be a page torn from New Zealand’s chequered historic land settlement archives.
These are not random musings. He has been acting as a cultural advisor on the Linwood Islamic Centre redevelopment, attempting to marry Islam and te ao Māori. Or perhaps just arrange a coffee date.
But first, he says, it is important to understand what tikanga (Māori custom) and Islam have in common. A lot apparently. Tyrone lists the commonalities: the importance of family, children, education, looking after your neighbours. “We get this narrative that Muslims have weird, awkward ways,” he says. “And they might get that narrative about us, as Māori, having a gang mentality.” But, really, the two value systems are almost identical.
Tyrone, both Māori and Muslim, is a cultural advisor for the Linwood redevelopment [Ethan Donnell/Al Jazeera]
So, when he first caught wind of the marae-mosque concept? “Game changer, man.”
“A non-Māori person has approached this idea,” he says. “Which excited me. Because I exactly want that. But I didn’t want to push my agenda.”
His role now is to stand in the middle, making connections. Perhaps easier said than done. He explains how these days whenever the Christchurch City Council wishes to build on iwi land, mana whenua are always consulted first. This was an ongoing attempt to right historic injustices; many Māori had been stripped of ancestral lands under the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. “You should respect the people of the land,” says Tyrone. “Hold that conversation.” Tikanga and Islamic law both agree on this point, he says, referring specifically to the concept of adab in Islam; good manners and a basic sense of humanity.
A non-Māori person has approached this idea. Which excited me … You should respect the people of the land.
TYRONE
Who are the people of the land in this case? Ngāi Tahu are the local iwi in Christchurch, while Ngāi Tūāhuriri are the hapū (Māori subtribe) with traditional authority over the area now known as the suburb of Linwood. Tyrone drops a finger onto Linwood, found to the east of the city centre, on his hand drawn map, indicating as much. He explains how he first put the architect leading the project in touch with an advisor from the hapū. While there had been an initial consultation, no formal agreement between the two had been reached. Māori symbols had since been crudely incorporated into an early design, including kahukura (in this context the attribute of a God who would appear as a rainbow, offering advice in times of war) being used as a decorative rainbow on a ceiling.
There is hope still. Tyrone had reconnected the architect with mana whenua for further consultation before the design concept goes public. This would ensure the mana (intrinsic value) of the local people was only enhanced through the design. “He’s doing his best,” says Tyrone.
Tyrone recognises the unity that emerged in the wake of the mass shooting is fragile. He worries that without proper consultation any future partnership between iwi and the Muslim community would be damaged.
“But we’ll still be thankful for the marae,” he says. “Or whatever gets built.”
VII – Hasan
One evening in late February, Hasan was driving home from Ashburton. The daylight was fading, and he could see the headlights of a commercial truck ahead. He suspects the driver fell asleep at the wheel. Whatever the case, the truck slid over the median line and into the path of his company vehicle. He instinctively swerved left, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision. The truck instead hit his rear bumper, sending him careening off the road.
The truck driver continued on until he was chased down by a motorist who had witnessed the scene.
The company vehicle was a total write off. Hasan, miraculously, stepped from the wreckage unscathed. He was a little shaken, though only for a few hours.
“This is becoming a habit,” he says, wryly, now.
Far from seeing himself as bulletproof, this serves instead as another sign to him of some greater purpose. He seems to have found that path now.
Hasan’s kids are pretty rough while he plays with them. He presents his back as a saddle. Haniyah, a little too old for such play, jumps on. Yahya has grown to be possessive of baba, and tries to knock her off the summit. Maryam toddles now, joining in on the fun. The roughhousing does not seem to exhaust him. He feels invincible.
At first, he had considered retraining as a police officer. Most advice, however, suggested the training and cadet years would be too physical for a man entering his 40th year. So, instead, Ayesha has filed paperwork to study nursing. The family will maintain the status quo until she begins classes in July. But when that does happen Hasan intends to become a stay-at-home father during the day, and find shift work in the evenings.
“I can do it for them,” he says.
VIII – Rahimi
Rahimi lies flat on his back, while his son slowly yet forcefully presses his knee down to his chest. You can hear the struggle in his laboured breathing, and see the pain written on his face. But after a few minutes of repeating this motion, his leg seems more limber, comfortable in the motion.
The exercises take roughly 15 minutes each day, depending on his level of pain. They are not steered towards helping him walk again. The idea is to ensure his body does not atrophy from lack of movement.
Even so, the ultimate goal is still getting back on his feet. He wants to go hiking in the Cashmere Hills at the southern end of Christchurch. “I am still positive that I can walk again. But if not, it’s OK,” he shrugs. “I did that one before.”
Rahimi performs his physio exercises, with the help of his son, Ahmad Razif [Ethan Donnell/Al Jazeera]
A final decision about the brain stimulator implant was still pending from his neurosurgeon.
Ahmad Razif and Nur Faiqah have taken up karate lessons. Nor Azila snaps photos on her phone, scrolling through them later. Ahmad has a look of stern concentration on his face, but in everyday motion his nerves have settled. He seems happy, playing with a troupe of Star Wars Lego figurines. “He can talk a little bit about the incident now,” says Nor Azila.
Nor Azila is busy as ever, back in the lab for hours at a time. She beams with pride as she shows photos from her recent graduation. There is still some way to go, she says, before experiments on her implant will move from in-vitro to animal or human subjects.
The family is due to move into a new home next month. One with ramps for easy wheelchair access and supportive railing in the bathroom and restroom. The home also has a much larger kitchen. “What will I do with all that space?” she asks.
IX – Mazhar
A sacred place need not be solemn. Look to the Al Noor Mosque for proof. Although security measures are tighter, the doors of the mosque are still open to anyone. Pass through them and you’re likely to hear a polite “hello, brother” or “as-salamu alaykum”. Often the racket of children playing trails down the long corridor leading to the main prayer room.
This afternoon only muffled sobs lead down that hallway. A woman has travelled from Bombay, India, a 16-hour flight from New Delhi before the connecting Auckland-Christchurch flight. An exhausting pilgrimage. Barely sleeping, she has travelled that distance for her father. She wants to know where he spent his last moments. Where he bowed in prostration that day. Where he died.
Mazhar came this afternoon to meet a friend. Instead he finds a sister, deep in grief, attended by two other women, trying to provide her some relief. He asks who her father was. The woman tells him.
“I washed the body,” he responds.
He shows her the spot where her father died. She asks him questions. He explains where each of the bullets hit. He details, unsparingly, the wounds they left on his body.
At her request, he tries to make her a witness, as best he can, to those moments, both the brutal death and ritualistic cleansing that followed. This information is hers to know, he reasons. May the knowledge bring her some comfort.
She thanks him, dries her tears, and walks down the hallway into the daylight.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA