Zine El Abidine Tawfiq writes: So I saw New Zealand days after the massacre

As a journalist, I have doubts about what seems obvious. I always use in my dialogue with myself the English phrase "too good to be true" this beauty can not be real. I said that first thing I read and saw the stories of solidarity, love and unity that the New Zealanders demonstrated in the plight of the two mosques in Christchurch, on the southern island of this remote country, as if to tell you your world and my world. I thought Australia was far away, but New Zealand was 1,500 miles away.

I did not want to believe even after I arrived in Christchurch and saw the roses and candles filled with the solemnity and mourning of the Botanic Garden Wall in the heart of the city and the security cordon around the Light Mosque where the first massacre took place. I said, I am coming from an area that wakes up on a saw and sleeps on Kerbaj, yet it is daring enough to brag to the world and say to him, "You do not teach us our humanity," perhaps they are like others. Then I jumped to my tongue the phrase "too good to be true" what this beauty had to be true.

Then I am busy with the island windows and coverings at the fence of the garden, if a girl painted on her face with a sincere smile but the sadness in her eyes wider than the smile on her lips.

She asked me in an Iraqi dialect that had only a few years of alienation: "Do you belong to the island?" I said yes. I said Ayat al-Amri, the sister of martyr Hussein al-Amri. I did not know what to say? I did not expect the relatives of the victims to come to me, instead of looking for them and going to them. I did not manage what I say, and to the extent of her intelligence, I was asked to answer, "I work myself in coordination with the media so that grief does not kill me." What saddens me most about this trip is the sad sadness in the eyes of this girl and her smile with smiles.

Then her father Hazem al-Amri and her mother the Iraqi cutter gave me a gift from Janna Adnan Ahmed Ezzat. I knew her first thing I saw her publication on the martyrdom of her son Hussein on her Facebook page before my arrival in New Zealand in days.

The meeting did not last long, and the New Zealanders quickly beat them and saw them on national television. There was a New Zealand girl and her companion practicing sports in the walkway next to the wall of the park where we stood the media, and she stopped as soon as she saw Mrs. Jannah tears flowed from her eyes so that her two sisters drowned and almost collapsed in the lap of the great lady in her grief and limits. Then she disappeared in a mass of people, comforting her in her martyrdom, and a sign stood with me, but this time her smile could not keep the tears in her eyes. Hazem al-Omari, the father, met with me, and I spoke to him about Mosul, his country, which did not receive what was inflicted on Iraq.

What happened with Mrs. Jannah I also saw him. People stopped me in the street, like I was a victim of the street, and their tears flowed when I comfort them too. The New Zealanders of European descent stopped me apologizing and saying honestly, "What happened does not represent us."

"This does not mean anything to me or to my country," said one elderly Maori resident, weeping.

Before Mrs. Jannah I had met a family from Jeddah, a mother, a father, a son and two daughters. The two girls, Gabi in high school and Genevieve at the university, wore a white veil and stood silently in front of the roses and candles. Genievieve appeared with me on the island screen. But frankly so far I did not lie or believe. I was saying well let's see.

On my way to the hotel that night I was stopped homeless, I was expecting to say the phrase I used to hear in this case, "change please" but they said "Sorry, we are sorry for our hearts with you.

After five days in New Zealand I realized that this beauty is real. It's Too Good and Too True.