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The life story of the victims of the Christchurch Mosque is a striking reflection of a world in turmoil, marked by war, poverty and economic inequality.
In New Zealand, many thought they had found an isolated and safe corner of the Earth to rebuild. That changed last Friday at 13:40, when an armed man opened fire by chance.
"I was so happy to have a beautiful country where to raise my children," said Mazharuddin Syed Ahmed, a survivor of these attacks. "It really hurts me."
Since 50 lives were suddenly taken in the week, Christchurch has collected powerful messages of unity. For many of them, it opened their eyes to a diverse and complex community to which they paid little attention.
But it also reminds how easy it is to hate and then explode. A closer look at the stories of those who attended the mosques last Friday also shows how fragile their world has always been.
& # 39; They are fleeing death & # 39;
Khaled Mustafa, 44, and his son Hamza, 16, were refugees. They had escaped the war in Syria with three other members of the family.
The family had first stayed in Jordan before being accepted as part of the New Zealand Refugee Resettlement Program.
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They naturally badumed that New Zealand was a safe place and had been there for less than a year when they were killed at Al Noor Mosque on Deans Avenue, the site of the first bombing.
Abo Ali, a Syrian who moved to New Zealand in 1990, said he met the family only once, but that they were "so happy to have a better life".
"They are fleeing death and they are dying here," Ali told the BBC.
Hamza's younger brother, Zaid, was also at the mosque. He survived, but was injured. He attended the funeral of his father and brother on Wednesday in a wheelchair after the operation.
"I should not be standing in front of you, I should be lying next to you," he would have heard mumbling near their grave.
Abo Ali said the support of New Zealanders helped the community in the past week
Ibo said the news had hit local Syrian and Muslim communities hard.
"But afterwards, when we see the support of the New Zealand people and when we see the Christian people of New Zealand too, its support – believe me, we forget our problem."
His dream of realizing his
In many ways, Ansi Alibava, 24, was unlikely to travel to New Zealand.
She was born in Kerala, India, not in a wealthy family. After the death of his father in Saudi Arabia, where he worked, she began to look after the 18-year-old family.
Her husband, Abdul Nazer, said that at their first meeting, he was struck by the fact that she "supported everything".
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The couple had emigrated from India a year ago to pursue their dream of studying and traveling abroad. His dream was to make his dream come true, he said.
It was only when his father agreed to pledge his home against a loan that the couple was able to visit New Zealand. It was the first time that one or the other was even outside Kerala. After finding a job in Christchurch, they helped both families at home.
Mr. Nazer can only handle a few words when he describes the happiness that they shared in New Zealand.
She loved her studies, he says, sitting in a room at Lincoln University in Christchurch where she was studying for a master's degree in agricultural engineering. She had recently started an internship.
He had just told his cousin Fahad Ismail Ponnath, who was there to support him, that the campus had brought back so many "beautiful memories" – pieces in which they were together, places where they had walked.
But last Friday, the couple went to Al Noor Mosque, as usual, to meet in the men's and women's quarters.
Abdul Nazer (left) said his wife had room in her heart for everyone
When the shots exploded, Mr. Nazer fled the building and jumped over a fence at a nearby property.
The owner of this house did not initially let him in "thinking that he was perhaps one of the terrorists," Ponnath said.
But he soon left the security of this house to look for his wife and found her lying motionless in a street. As he was walking towards her and calling, other survivors stepped in to tell him that she had pbaded away. Soon the police were there and took everyone, including her husband, elsewhere.
In limited English, Mr. Nazer, 34, said about his wife: "This is a really lovely person.
"She loved everyone," he says. "Cousins, friends, she kept a big space in her mind [for] family members. Especially my father and my mother, my brothers. "
Mr. Nazer does not know for sure whether he will stay in New Zealand or not, but it is likely that he is committed to supporting Ms. Alibava's family, who no longer has support. of family.
"My husband – what a charming man"
On Wednesday, flowers and tributes began to pile up in front of Mohammed Imran Khan's takeaway store, Indian Grill.
Mr. Khan, also known among his friends as Imran Bhai, died at the Linwood Mosque.
Originally from India, he was an immensely popular figure in Christchurch.
"It's an absolutely overwhelming event [amount] I do not even know the texts, the messages or the communications of people I do not even know – I'm just saying how charming he was, "says his wife Tracey.
"I knew people loved him, not so much at this point, I think, he was a very well known man in the community for his heart, his time and everything else."
- Who were victims of the shooting at the mosque?
She takes care of their teenage son, as well as relatives of her husband.
"It's very difficult to be on the other side of the world and to hear that, and not to have any information," she explains, with parents from around the world.
"This country is safe"
Mazharuddin Syed Ahmed, who spent much of his life in his homeland, India, then Saudi Arabia, said he "did not understand" how safe and inclusive New Zealand was when he arrived.
He used to say to his friends abroad: "You are afraid of dying to go to airports." Here, we like the airport. profit, it's like a pleasure trip for us, because this country is safe. "
Syed Ahmed said the Linwood mosque was home to a small community nearby.
"We really like going there on Fridays and we were praying," he says, emphasizing the last word.
He can not believe what happened to him and his friends in the country that he considers to be the biggest on the planet.
Mr. Syed Ahmed said to be frozen after hearing three gunshots interrupting the Friday prayer.
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Abdul Aziz was hailed as a hero for attacking the gunman at Linwood Mosque
People continued to pray briefly but his ears "were completely focused – something is happening". Then, he says, a man shouted, "Protect yourself, protect yourself, move, move, move."
Despite the shots, he ran straight to the main door – he does not know why – and hid in a storage space next to the door when the gunman came in.
He thinks he was saved by another faithful, Abdul Aziz, who attacked the attacker by launching a credit card machine.
"But this time, I saw my right friend in my field of vision," says Syed Ahmed. "[A] a big splash of blood was on the wall – I could see that he had died there. "
"A kind of scandalous character"
Dozens of victims have largely started their lives outside of New Zealand, South Asia and the Middle East, Somalia or Fiji, Malaysia and Indonesia.
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Linda Armstrong's family says her last act saved a friend at the mosque
Linda Armstrong, 64, was New Zealander but her life was far from conventional, says her nephew Kyron Gosse.
At one point, like "a little hippie", she had lived on Waiheke Island near Auckland, her hometown "in this little hut in the middle of the bush with a long fall [toilet] and no shower. "At other times, she had settled into lofts and grannies, had been riding motorcycles and had traveled a lot – once living in Berlin.
Always curious, she discovered Islam in 2011 while she volunteered at a refugee center in Auckland and was chatting with people there.
"She would like to know – why? What do you think?" Mr. Gosse says. "And as she was discovering more and more Islam, she told me," They are really beautiful people and this religion touches me a lot. "
He describes his aunt as "a kind of scandalous character" who has always been rebellious and a little stubborn.
She brought her stubbornness to the mosque. After a conversation with a younger family member, she challenged the plastic waste generated at this location. So she went out and bought everyone at reusable plates.
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She rarely had a lot of money but was generously generous. Despite receiving welfare payments, she started giving NZD 50 (£ 25, $ 34) a month to a family of Syrian refugees.
"She never met them, she just heard about it and said, what can I do?" Mr. Gosse says.
Ms. Armstrong "was not in perfect health", so she was sitting at the back of the mosque when violence erupted. This did not prevent him from acting quickly to protect others.
"She put herself in front of one of her friends, took the ball and died in her arms with the imam praying for her," said Mr. Gosse at the BBC .
"We are all pretty proud that this is the kind of person she was."
"Our brother has disappeared"
In the Christchurch area this week, residents are comparing the collective trauma to an earthquake that hit the city in 2011, killing 185 people.
Many, they say, feel a similar pain, although they are fully aware that this pain has been inflicted by a person and a specific community.
After an earthquake, a city can rebuild – a physical healing of its wounds.
A victim, Zakaria Bhuiya, was part of this process. According to the Indian Social and Cultural Club, he had left Bangladesh to settle in Christchurch, where he was working on reconstruction after the earthquake.
Mr. Bhuiya, a welder, took an annual holiday on Friday to celebrate his 33rd birthday with friends at Al Noor Mosque.
"He lived on basic essentials to maximize the money that he could send home to support his family," said his employer, AMT Mechanical. He leaves a woman in Bangladesh, Rina Akter.
He had no family in Christchurch, but at that time officials were needed to identify his body, and his friends organized to organize a small demonstration outside the mosque. .
"Our brother has disappeared, give us information," we read on a panel.
"He transformed my life"
Sometimes in this city of about 400,000 people, it seems that everyone knew a victim or knew someone who knew it.
Peter Higgins, 67, said cardiologist Amjad Hamid had convinced him to retire after a "heart attack" and its complications.
Peter Higgins says that Amjad Hamid had saved many people during his life
"This guy really changed my life," he says of Dr. Hamid, a 57-year-old Palestinian who emigrated decades ago. "He's getting shot at, and I think, how many people did he save? And someone decides to play with a gun."
The tragedy has caused many people to think more deeply about the Muslim community here.
Clare Needham, 72, said Daoud Nabi – the first of the victims to be identified – frequently went to a charity shop where she volunteered and traded with things.
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Daoud Nabi was the first of the victims to be officially named
Mr. Nabi, 70, told him about his deep love for his grandson. It was only this week that she learned the kind of profile that he had within the community.
Born in Afghanistan, but a long-time resident of New Zealand, he was president of a local Afghan badociation and a known supporter of other migrant groups.
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A visitor to homage, Dave Palmer, was struck by the tolerance of Farid Ahmed, whose wife was killed during the attack, who told reporters that he had forgiven the gunman. .
"I thought, I do not know if I could ever do that," says Palmer, a Christian. "It takes an incredible amount of strength and courage."
The kind of tolerance embodied by Farid Ahmed and Linda Armstrong contrasts with the shooter and the online communities through which information allegedly posted by him spreads.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, was charged with white supremacist murder.
The gunman broadcast the mbadacre live on Facebook and a person suspected of having been put online a 65,000 word document describing the alleged reasons for these attacks.
As many have pointed out since, it was littered with coded references that sought to engage specific online communities. He was posted on 8chan – a privileged forum by the right wing. This has shown how easy it is for intolerance and hatred to ignite in such forums, unlike the larger community, where tolerance is patiently built up over time.
In the end, it was enough for a man and 17 minutes – in the case of the attack of Al Noor – to break up tens of carefully constructed lives and for a second luck.
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Questions have been raised since the attacks on whether forums should be better monitored for evidence of extremism, but experts believe this would be problematic for a number of reasons, including the sheer volume of publications.
"We told them of our concerns about the rise of the right-right, and the government did not respond adequately," said Anjum Rahman of the Council of Islamic Women of New Zealand, who urged successive governments to fight against discrimination.
Ms. Rahman also severely criticizes the media. "Where have you been?" she said, arguing that there was not enough surveillance at the global level.
Paul Hunt, the chief human rights commissioner of New Zealand, said that his country was one of the best in the world in human rights, although it was one of the best in the world. he is familiar with Islamophobia, racism and hate crimes in "certain sectors of society".
"He chose the wrong place"
But if the shooter – whose name Premier Jacinda Ardern vowed never to speak – had wanted to tear New Zealand apart, judging by last week, he failed.
On Thursday, the Prime Minister announced a mbadive campaign of crackdown on New Zealand's firearms legislation, including banning all types of weapons used in the attacks.
In contrast to the attacks in the United States, for example, critics have almost always been welcomed: some people have started to surrender their weapons even before the ban is announced.
Last week saw a steady stream of tributes from New Zealanders of all ages and from all backgrounds
Again and again, the residents say they are determined to stand together so that this tragedy does not happen again.
"I try to treat grief but also anger: how dare he do this to us?" says Cara Butler, 38. "But I think he's picking the wrong place, I think he's going to see the opposite of what he thought, he's not going to create a division, it's going to create a community and more." cohesion. "
Mr. Syed Ahmed, the survivor, said that his two children "have New Zealand and Kiwi values - and I am very happy about them".
But he fears for them, saying that all nations – not just New Zealand – should not be complacent.
"Now I see that people can come to the most remote and peaceful corner of the Earth," he says.
"It just can not happen to this country, you can not leave it as another incident. [travelling] as far as the Moon and Mars, but our neighborhoods are not safe for our children?
"It's everyone's responsibility to handle this hate."
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