What was supposed to be another weekly Friday Prayer, what happened on Friday March 15, 2019 will forever leave a scar on Muslims worldwide.

When I first saw Nazril at the Al Noor Mosque, I knew he was a bit ‘off’. You could tell that he’d been through something. I sat down with him and started talking. It was his first time coming back to the mosque. It was the month of Ramadan.

Nazril still remembers the day when it happened. He was sitting on the left side of the mosque. It took him a couple of seconds to realize what had happened. As he was trying to get up and run, he was shot in the foot. He tried to stand up but was shot in the back as he fled.

“I couldn’t remember how I fell; all I was thinking while I was lying down was: the next bullet will go through my head.” 

Nazril told that there were two bodies on top of him and his face was full of their blood. 

“I can still remember; blood was dripping onto my face, but I can’t do anything.”

At the Al Noor Mosque during one of the last 10 days of Ramadan, Nazril recalls how he could see the shooter walking towards the rear side of the mosque. He also recalls the moment New Zealand Police came in after the shooter dashed away.

“The police came in; I was sitting up by the time they (NZP) came in. They asked me if I could walk; I told them that I was shot on my left foot. They told me to ‘try’ to stand up, obviously, I told them I couldn’t. Not long after, the St John’s came in. Asked the same thing and told me to try to stand up too.”

But Nazril understood. Everything was so chaotic. Before the March 15 shootings that killed 50 Muslims during Friday prayers at two different mosques, New Zealand hadn’t dealt with any major terrorism acts on its home soil. 

Nazril spent three weeks in two different hospitals; the Christchurch Hospital and the Burwood Hospital and went through three major operations. He remembers being in Christchurch Hospital, recovering from one of his surgeries, and waking up and screaming.

“I woke up and suddenly I saw a uniformed police officer standing by my bed, complete with the bulletproof vest just like the [shooter]. I screamed my lungs out. I was scared. I thought it would happen again.”

Nazril’s wife, Zurinawati was by his side. She calmed him down and the police politely moved aside.

“I understood what the police officer was doing. He was just doing his job,” said Zurinawati, who is a senior lecturer at the Hotel and Tourism Management Faculty of Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Puncak Alam campus in Malaysia.

Zurinawati was in Thailand for work with a group of students when she heard the news. 

“My phone wasn’t on roaming, so I didn’t receive any notifications until a fellow friend and lecturer got the news from Whatsapp. She asked me, do you know what just happened? Obviously, I didn’t know,” Zurinawati said. 

“We [the study group] had to split up. We decided to take two vans; one to continue the journey and one more for me to get back to the border.”

By this time, Zurinawati, or Zu as she calls herself, had switched her phone to roaming. She heard that her children were safe and back home from school. 

But she still didn’t know her husband’s situation. She told me that one of her sons tried calling his father on his cellphone and a nurse answered, saying that Nazril was in the hospital.

“I just left New Zealand that Tuesday [March 12] to come back for work. Then, this happened,” she said. 

Zurinawati left Malaysia for New Zealand with one of her sons on March 16, the next day. 

The couple has four children. Their eldest son Muhammad Haiqal Daniel, 20, is studying at UiTM Penang and the other three, Muhammad Haqiem Daniel, 18, Muhammad Hazieq Daniel, 14, and Muhammad Hazriq Daniel, 10, had been staying in Christchurch with their father to attend school. 

Nazril, first came to New Zealand in 2007 to accompany his wife who was doing her PhD at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. The family of 6 went back to Malaysia upon Zurinawati’s completion in 2011 but decided to settle back in Christchurch earlier this year for the three children’s education.

The family is blessed and happy with all the support they have gotten from the local community, the New Zealand government, and Malaysians back home. “We still receive food packs from local NGOs. I could not thank them enough. Also, I’m happy that I can still eat nasi kerabu cooked by my wife,” Nazril said as he breaks his Ramadan fast at his house. 

“As of now, my medical certificate has been extended till September. I will still go for medical checkups. I was also told by the doctor to start aquatic therapy. Let’s see, maybe after Raya? It’s hard. There are days I feel good, but there are days I’m just down and not feeling my best.”