Warning: The follow story contains information about the Christchurch massacre
David Williams
Christchurch, August 26, 2020
A woman whose father was killed in the Christchurch attack demands the shooter remember his name.
Sara Qasem faces the killer of her father, Abdelfattah.
“I urge you to take a look around this courtroom and ask yourself, who exactly is the other here right now? Is it us, or is it you?”
Her voice drops: “I think the answer is pretty clear.”
Raw emotion of the broken-hearted
The third day of a sentencing hearing for the March 15, 2019 terrorist, in Christchurch’s High Court, continued today with the reading of more victim impact statements – the raw emotion of the broken-hearted, the anger directed at the monster who shattered their lives in an attack on two city Mosques last year.
Every journey is different. Qasem’s roots are in Palestine, having lived in New Zealand since she was five. A Kiwi and, equally so, a Middle Easterner.
“My parents, they built me on the foundations of caring and doing for others before myself.”
Dressed in a smart grey jacket, a green patterned scarf draped around her neck, she punctuates her statement with interjections to the terrorist. After talking about her beloved father – a hero, a shining, glimmer man, the light of our lives – she sometimes adds “remember that name” or “hear the name.”
Agony of a daughter
Wiping tears from her face with a tissue, she says: “These tears are not for you, just to clarify.”
When Qasem, a teacher, heard there was a shooting at the Al Noor Mosque (Masjid An-Nur) last year, her heart sank. Her devoted father never missed Friday prayer.
“I knew exactly what you had done to my beautiful father at that very moment.”
The family’s central thread, the fabric of the community, was cruelly taken away.
She wonders about his final moments. Was he in pain? Was he frightened? What were his final thoughts?
“I wish more than anything in the world that I could have been there to hold his hand, tell him it will all be okay. I couldn’t do that.”
Mass murder in a country her parents emigrated to for safety and a successful future for their children? Her father murdered alongside their wonderful community members, their aunties and uncles, for no other reason than for their ethnicity, their religion?
It is incomprehensible. “I don’t get it,” Qasem says. “The dots don’t connect in my mind.”
It shouldn’t have happened. But it did because the killer made a choice. A cold-blooded, selfish, disgusting and heinous, evil choice. It is a choice that leaves Qasem worried.
No longer safe
She’s anxious other family members are in harm’s way. “I no longer feel safe in my home, in my own country.”
She now carries a heavy stone in her heart because of the tragedy. But with aroha/love, from the beautiful people of Aotearoa, she has pockets of hope.
But she is forced to live with the reality her father is someone she can no longer hear or hug.
The man who would walk down the hallway with purpose, a spring in his step. The man with a deep belly laugh. Who shared inside jokes with his friends. An innovator. A mathematician.
“All a daughter ever wants is her dad. I want to go on more road-trips with him. I want to smell his garden sauce cooking. His cologne.”
She never truly knew the meaning of a broken heart until she saw her father’s body, and the physical impacts of the attack.
Kintsugi-Japanese Art
Turning to the terrorist, she is uncertain there is enough justice to punish him for what he did.
A monster. A coward – a word used over and over by victims to describe the gunman. Those who fight with guns are weak, she says. “You are not strong, you are weak. Look at yourself.”
Qasem refers to Kintsugi, a centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery using powdered gold. She says their hearts might be broken but, slowly and surely, they are reassembling each crack with a thread of gold. Becoming stronger and more beautiful and more united than ever before.
“The gold is the love, the aroha, the New Zealand community, the friends and neighbours, the flower wall, the Government.”
There is a desire to know more about the Muslim community, about its foundations of peace and love. There is a renewed pride in their religion, within the community.
While the gunman paved a path that ends in loneliness, fear and division, he has woven a thread which makes the Muslim a far more integral part of the fabric of New Zealand society.
You had no right, Qasem told the terrorist. It must be so miserable to live so close-minded in a beautifully diverse world, she said.
“I pity you, your coarse and tainted heart and your narrow view of the world.”
Brenton Tarrant has pleaded guilty to 51 charges of murder, 40 of attempted murder, and one charge of committing a terrorist act. Justice Cameron Mander is expected to sentence the 29-year-old Australian tomorrow.
