COMMENT

Numbers. They're such a blunt way to measure tragedy, don't you think?

A number doesn't tell you anything about a person. A number doesn't have a cheeky smile. It's not a mum or a dad. A number is not a kid, who loves playing football on the weekend with her big brother. A number doesn't like being read stories before bed.

Last night, I lay wide awake just imagining all the people in my home city doing exactly the same thing, people who wouldn't be sleeping a wink.

All of those families, overcome with shock and grief...49 people, in my city, my home.

I've lived two-thirds of my life in Christchurch, born and bred.

When I was in my last year of high school, I remember I made this short and very amateur documentary about racism in Christchurch.

This was 2004. There had recently been a few racially motivated attacks in the city.

Me and my buddies went to a park in Linwood, it was actually very close to one of the mosques where people were murdered yesterday, and we interviewed the former leader of the National Front in Christchurch.

H told us quite plainly that he didn't like other races and religions in the city. I remember, as a 17-year-old, just a kid, being shocked. Honestly just shocked that someone from my home, someone in my home, could have such a different take on the world.

He was a big man, why is he so scared?

As I lay in bed last night, I thought of a man, a man I never knew but who I have never forgotten.

He was 39 years old and a refugee from Afghanistan. He fled the Taliban and clung to his family in the wild Indian Ocean before his family were rescued.

After defying the odds in the pursuit of a better life, he brought his family and his five kids to a beacon of peace on the South Pacific.

He studied English, he drove a taxi at night to support his family, I don't know when he actually slept. It was the relentless pursuit of a better life.

Then two young men climbed in his cab and stabbed him in the heart.

I watched as Muslim men turned to Mecca to pray and then bury him in the Canterbury earth.

I know the mosques, I know both of them. As a kid dad would park near the Deans ave mosque on Saturday mornings when I had cricket or rugby or when we would walk across Hagley park to watch my sisters play netball.

As an adult, I used to run around Hagley park all the time. In fact, every day for weeks, covering the Christchurch earthquake, I would run around the park with my cameraman colleague, kind of as a way to clear our heads.

We would go and film our earthquake stories then we would run around Hagley Park. I was sure, at the time, that this was the worst thing that would ever happen to Christchurch.

Can you compare a massive natural disaster with human evil? No, of course not, but why, of all cities, why Christchurch?

There were two other little moments I was reminded of last night, the first was of the agonised faces outside Sandy Hook, the elementary school.

I remember looking away from peoples' faces. It was only a week or two before Christmas and I was threr on the other side of the world. I remember looking away and thinking at least I get to go home, at least I get to go to Christchurch next week.

The other was police cordons, sobbing people, three years ago, Orlando Florida, the Pulse nightclub that had been shot up in a heinous massacre, an act of terrorism.

Most of the victims were from the rainbow community, the shooter apparently didn't like people that were different to him. He was scared.

The death toll came through, 49 people killed in a terror attack. 49 people, I remember the gravity of that number. The same number of Kiwis who died yesterday.

I remember in Florida standing there, kind of dumbfounded, awash with this feeling. I felt very lonely, half a world away.

This is madness, I thought, 49 people...It's time to move home, it's time to go home.