Husna Ahmed was 19 when she arrived in New Zealand from Bangladesh on her wedding day. Waiting to meet her was Farid, the man she would marry in a few hours, as their families had agreed.
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A quarter of a century later, the life they had built together was torn apart at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch when a gunman walked into the building, firing on worshippers at Friday prayers.
Husna encountered the gunman on his way out of the mosque. He shot her on the footpath. She fell and he fired two more shots, killing her instantly.
Farid, who uses a wheelchair after an earlier accident, was talking to a friend and was delayed from joining worshippers at his usual spot at the front of the mosque, instead praying in a small side room.
He managed to escape when he heard the shooting, returning when the gunman left, to find many of his friends and community members dead, and comfort those who were dying.
Farid found out about his wife's death when a detective he knew called his niece as they waited outside the mosque.
She passed the phone: "I don't want you to wait the whole night, Farid. Go home, she will not come," Farid said the detective told him.
"At the moment I hear that, my response was I felt numb," Farid told Reuters. "I had tears but I didn't break down."
A total of 50 people were killed in the rampage, with as many wounded, as the gunman went from Al Noor to another mosque in the South Island city.
Most victims were migrants or refugees from countries including Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Syria, Turkey, Somalia and Afghanistan.
Husna was one of five members of a growing but tight-knit Bangladeshi community killed, according to the Bangladesh consul in New Zealand, Shafiqur Rahman Bhuiyan. Four others were wounded, one critically.
"The country is viewed as a slice of paradise," he told Reuters. "Everyone is in shock. It will certainly take time for the residents to come out of the trauma."
Members of the Bangladesh cricket team, in town for a test match against New Zealand, narrowly avoided the carnage, turning up at the Al Noor mosque soon after the attack took place.
Based on what eyewitnesses told him, Farid said instead of hiding, Husna helped women and children inside the mosque and ran to the front of the building to look for him.
"She's such a person who always put other people first and she was even not afraid to give her life saving other people," Farid said.
Farid said he had forgiven his wife's killer.
"I want to give the message to the person who did this, or if he has any friends who also think like this: I still love you," Farid said. "I want to hug you and I want to tell him in face that I am talking from my heart. I have no grudge against you, I never hated you, I will never hate you."
A few hours after the massacre as evening fell, the front room of Farid's home in a sleepy Christchurch suburb was full with survivors and friends, grieving for a woman many described as like a mother to them.
When Farid was partially paralysed after being run over by a car outside his house, after four years of marriage, she moved with him to Christchurch and became his nurse.
"Our hobby was we used to talk to each other. A lot. And we never felt bored," he said.
Many new migrants in Christchurch brought young families, or were starting them and Husna took it upon herself to care for women through their pregnancies, often waking Farid at all hours so he could drive her to the births.
"We think she's like a mother...if there's something we needed, we go to Husna," said Mohammed Jahangir Alan, a welder.
Husna would also lead the customary washing and prayer ritual for women who died. She was due to lead a workshop the day after her death to teach other women the process.
Now, Husna's devastated female family members will wash her for her funeral, expected later this week.
"We know she would just want us to be a part of it, to wash her," said her sister-in-law Ayesha Corner.
After the burial, Farid says he wants to continue the work he and his wife used to do and to care for their 15-year-old daughter.
When the lockdown at her school lifted on Friday, their daughter returned home, knowing only her mother was missing and asking where she was.
"I said: 'She is with God,'" Farid said.
"She said: 'You are lying'. She said: 'Are you telling me I don't have a mother?'"
"I said: 'Yes, but I am your mother now and I am your father...we have to change the roles."
Australian Associated Press