Farid Ahmed, from the TV One documentary We Are One: The Mosque Attacks One Year On. Photo / TVNZ
Farid Ahmed, from the TV One documentary We Are One: The Mosque Attacks One Year On. Photo / TVNZ
COMMENT:
This Sunday marks one of the darkest days in our nation's history, the day of the Christchurch mosque shootings which cost the lives of 51 people.
TVNZ marked the solemn occasion with We Are One: The Mosque Attacks One Year On, a documentary which aired on TV1 last nightand which will - and should - challenge this country.
It checks in with some of the tragedy's most well-known faces, the victims and families who made headlines and whose stories gave the rest of us an insight into the pain of the Muslim community as a whole.
It's not a series of hard-hitting, grimly-framed interviews as you might expect. Instead, we're welcomed into people's homes to have discussions on the sofa, or at the table over a cuppa.
With a fairly simplistic style and a focus squarely on its subjects, We Are One feels warm and personal and real and that's what gives it such impact; it's a reminder, a year on, that these people aren't just headlines, they are people who are just like us and people who are suffering, but also thriving despite it all.
We catch up with Farid Ahmed, whose wife Husna died while trying to save him from the gunfire, and his journey through grief and depression toward hope and connection as he throws himself into helping his community as best he can.
We also meet Mustafa Boztas as he works his way back to his previous physical strength after suffering a gunshot wound to his leg in the Al Noor Mosque.
Mustafa Boztas in We Are One: The Mosque Attacks One Year On. Photo / TVNZ
The most striking thing about his story, though, is his mental health journey and the focus both he and the documentary places on mental and spiritual healing, not only through his Muslim faith, but also through seeking professional help and familial support. So often we only get to see one or the other when really, it's the combination of all that contributes best to healing.
We Are One is not just about people who were in the mosques. We also catch up with family members left behind - sons, brothers and sisters who have processed their anger and are now continuing to work through their grief.
We see family members travel to Mecca to participate in the spiritual pilgrimage known as Hajj, after the Saudi Arabian King, Salman bin Abdulaziz paid for 200 of those most affected by the shootings to go.
On this journey, we see surviving family members given an opportunity to reconnect with their culture, faith and people and represent their lost loved ones at a hugely spiritual event.
What really earns this doco its stripes is that as well as the good, it still focuses on the hard stuff.
Through Aamir, son of Imran Khan, and Shuayb, brother of Sayyad Milne, we get a painful insight into the effect the shootings had on the Muslim community in New Zealand, and will likely continue to have.
The teens talk openly about how they are now more aware of their Muslim-ness and mortality and how they even sit in different places when they pray at their mosque, based on proximity to the exits and likeliness of getting shot "if someone did come".
Noraini Abbas Milne, mother of Sayyad, speaks about how much more "friendly" non-Muslims are when she meets them in public now, which is great, but says a lot about how Muslim Kiwis were being treated before this tragedy.
Aya Al-Umari, sister of Hussein Al-Umari, speaks passionately about the racism she's dealt with her whole life and says while it was great to see Kiwis band together and "become human again", "that is something we need to carry through".
It seems a timely reminder, not just with March 15 around the corner but with coronavirus - and all the racial panic it's bringing - on our shores.
Where I live, in smalltown New Zealand, I've heard some stunningly hateful xenophobia over the virus.
People of Asian descent are copping it not just on the streets and online comments, but - as Herald writer Vera Alves has pointed out - through Asian families being denied services and Asian-owned businesses suffering major losses.
Alves got a flood of hateful emails in response to her writing on the matter. One, on Facebook, read: "They will never be us ... they are welcome to come, look and go home [and] take their mess with them."
I don't know how it's possible that after only a year we've gone from saying "we are one" to "take your disease back to your own country", but here we are.
By showing the hope and healing of the Muslim community post-March 15, and by putting a spotlight back on the pain, racism and Islamophobia that contributed to it, I hope We Are One serves as a much-needed reminder to do better, either with our own behaviour or calling out other people's.
