In November, we set off on a road trip around the South Island. Arriving in Christchurch, we spent days exploring on foot. Last time I visited the city, it was bleak, scarred, dominated by condemned buildings. The rebuild was still slow after the earthquakes, and the streets had a rough, trashed look. On a freezing night back then, I walked through the centre, spooked by all that dead space. There’s something terrifying about derelict buildings.
Now, years later, the change is remarkable. The reconstruction has taken off; new buildings are everywhere, and many are aesthetically and architecturally interesting. The city seems compact and dynamic. The river and parks are gorgeous in the spring sunshine. We walk around taking it in: the new centres and cafes, the river, the mature trees that have survived continuous upheaval. Suddenly, surprisingly, Christchurch is beautiful.
In the hotel, we watch news broadcasts about Israel. The World Health Organisation reports that a child is being killed in Gaza every 10 minutes. Gaza’s largest hospital, where 50,000 people are sheltering, is being bombed. Refugee camps are destroyed. International dismay is turning to anger and disgust. The French President has had enough. There is “no legitimacy”, he says, for continued bombardment: “These babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed.”
A news podcast discusses background, recent events. According to a UN report, Israel has been carrying out systematic demolition of Palestinian houses in the West Bank. This includes punitive demolitions. In January, Israeli authorities demolished 132 structures. Residents suffered the loss of houses, water and sanitation facilities. The UN reports the demolitions are making way for illegal Israeli settlements, and amount to the crime of “domicide” ‒ destruction of home. Israeli authorities have also been demolishing donor-funded Palestinian schools and preschools for several years.
In Christchurch, the inquest into the 2019 mosque shootings has been taking place. We cross from the Al Noor Mosque to the site of the Linwood Islamic Centre. Then we walk to the old red zone, where streets are still laid out on the empty land that used to be residential. A couple walk their dog under the surreal power poles.
I keep saying, “Imagine if this was our street.” Imagine it: the suburb where you lived alongside neighbours, your tūrangawaewae. Once bustling, its structures now erased, leaving nothing but the poignant beauty and the memory of the place that anchored you to the earth.
The news broadcasts have gone on. In Gaza, it’s domicide by blitzkrieg: shattering, indiscriminate and final. We have watched Gazans digging in the rubble with bare hands, carrying injured children into wrecked hospitals, Gazans screaming over lines of body bags. A friend, whose family is Israeli (one of whom, now a grandfather, fought with the Israeli Defence Forces in the Six-Day War), sends me a despairing text, horrified by the bombing.
In Avonside, the river flows; a mesh of gold-green light shimmers under the willows. On a week-day afternoon there is silence in the sun along the streets that go nowhere. We can see only traces of sections, lawns and fences. The people are departed. I think of lines of a Paul Celan poem about the Holocaust, “The Straitening”. I recall the poem’s baleful, recurring line about erasure: “Nowhere does anyone ask after you.” It is our duty to ask after people, wherever and whoever they are.
We leave the streets that go nowhere and head back to the centre. “So, the themes of today’s walking tour,” I announce (because I’m always fun to be around) “are mass murder, displacement and domicide.
“And also,” I add, because Christchurch has turned so beautiful, “hope”.
Charlotte Grimshaw is an Auckland author and critic.
