At the childcare centre my husband and I run in Christchurch, most of the children would have had somebody in their family who was injured during the attack or knew somebody who was injured.

Five of the children lost parents; lost their fathers. One of them was my granddaughter, Aya. And we had several whose parents were traumatised or injured. Some of the children were hearing a lot of things at home.

We reopened two weeks after the incident and it was clear from day one that mental health had to be our priority for the children. We needed to help them deal with their trauma, and learn how to handle it. They kept asking about one of our students who was wounded in the attacks, and some of them knew that she was injured. It was really a difficult situation.

I approached the education ministry and the prime minister and told them we needed support. I prepared a letter for Jacinda Ardern about mental health and the dire need in the community, short- and long-term.

She did act, and the government was supportive in terms of funding. But their actions were not quick enough. So we started organising help with mental health and started supporting the widows.

We changed the curriculum based on what we thought was good for the children; we didn’t want to overwhelm them. We focused on fun activities, as well as stories related to the loss of loved ones or things, even if it was the loss of a balloon. It’s been working well and our kids are doing much better. They are now happy and bubbly.

As Muslims, we need more opportunities to speak about positive things, rather than just incidents where a Muslim was involved as a terrorist. You hardly ever get this chance. But I think the 15 March incident was an eye-opener for many people, because we were the victims.

For me, I’m a scientist. I have a PhD. But Muslim women are often not acknowledged and given chances, even for work. If you’re wearing the hijab, you don’t even get to the point of an interview, and if you do, then you know the answer is no. Just recently people started acknowledging that, which is one of the positive things that happened after March.

The incident opened a lot of avenues for us. But do we really need a tragedy before we act?

Before this attack, the authorities definitely failed us as Muslims, because we’d been communicating with the police whenever there was a threat, and they would take a report and nothing would happen.

At our childcare centre, we’ve had windows broken several times and people shouting at us from the street. One time my car was covered with blood, with very nasty words that I didn’t even understand until our Kiwi teacher told me what they were.

If we want to announce an activity on social media for the community, we can’t write where it is, and that makes additional work for us.

I’ve been in New Zealand for 25 years, long enough to notice that there is a lot of discrimination towards foreigners in general and Muslims in particular, and lots of discrimination inside the education system. It’s not only students bullying students, it’s teachers bullying students, too. I’ve always raised the point that we need to talk more about other cultures. People say we need to be inclusive, but where’s the action?

Since the mass shooting, I’ve been using my skills and expertise and whatever knowledge I have to participate in things like the royal commission, or inquiry, into whether the attacks could have been prevented. This includes engaging with the government, all the different organisations who are helping, and the ministry of education.

Many of us who are the leaders in these matters are getting tired. I am personally; I just can’t handle all of this. Going through all of this engagement is overwhelming, and you always have to be alert. You have to be really thinking. And sometimes I don’t want to think. We have been training the youth in our community and motivating them, so we’re hoping they can step up.

There have been other changes since the incident. The government agency responsible for ethnic communities has received more funding, and there is a feeling that there should be a focus on social cohesion and activities. A lot of people from the wider community are now also coming and talking to us and appreciating us.

It’s definitely not what the person who did carried out this act would like to hear. His aim was completely the opposite, but he failed miserably. That’s why I want to tell him that we are very good. We’re fine. We’re happy. We miss our loved ones, but we know that they are in a better place. You didn’t achieve anything.

Dr Maysoon Salama is the mother of Atta Elayyan – one of 51 worshippers who died in the Christchurch mosque attacks in March 2019 – and the wife of Mohammad Alayan, who was badly injured. Along with her husband, she runs a Muslim childcare centre in Christchurch, and has been petitioning New Zealand’s government for change in the wake of the massacre. She talked to the Guardian’s Charlotte Graham-McLay.



