There were 50 victims of the Christchurch shooting, and we laid out 50 prayer rugs, collected from various members of the Muslim Students Association. We worried that only Muslims would come. We were wrong. All of us, in our grief, needed to see that crowd, drenched in sunset, faces tipped up towards the ten of us who were board members as we took to the podium, thanked them for coming.
Maybe I needed it most of all. I’d told myself, I’m not gonna cry. I did anyway, on the gold-touched podium in front of those 100-plus people, as I told them that my eleven-year-old sister asks me when Islamophobia will end and I don’t have an answer.
They didn’t judge. They were crying with me.