Devastated parents of Numan Haider live in a world of grief and confusion

GRIEF and shock take many forms, but for the devastated parents of Numan Haider their days are spent simply trying to survive.

Pain never ends for Numan’s parents

GRIEF and shock take many forms, but for the devastated parents of Numan Haider their days are spent simply trying to survive.

“It’s like madness, we are mad with sadness and sorrow for our son,” Numan’s father says.

It’s clear the couple, who we can’t name for legal reasons, are confused, angry and isolated.

They are barely eating, sleeping or seeing friends within their community in Melbourne’s sprawling eastern suburbs.

They are too busy sitting replaying the shocking events of Monday, September 23, last year when their son was shot dead by officers after agreeing to a meeting at the Endeavour Hills police station.

He had stabbed them with a knife in an apparent jihadi-style attack.

They won’t believe it.

“He was a good boy, a nice boy,” his father said gesticulating wildly.

“We never saw him do anything wrong.”

The family home, which once played host to the happy, immigrant family thrilled to have escaped war-torn Afghanistan, is devoid of the usual trappings of a busy life.

With the curtains drawn it’s remarkably dark and cold in their large, four-bedroom double-storey property as we talk in the sitting room; the onset of Melbourne’s sudden cold, wet autumn may have not even registered.

Details like this don’t matter any more.

Compounding their distress, the couple are again finding their family name in the national news — with the arrest of five teenagers said to be friends and admirers of their son in raids across the eastern suburbs.

Those arrests came amid allegations of a hideous Anzac Day terror attack against police and the public.

It is clear this development is almost too much to bear.

“We brought our son up, he went to an Australian school from when we came to this country when he was seven years old and we were responsible for him,” his father says.

“But he is accused of being a terrorist and now all this other stuff with these boys is being blamed on him.

“He was a good son, we never had any problems with him so it’s so hard for us to cope — we feel half mad most of the time.”

What the couple know too painfully well is their dead son has become a reviled hate figure, and a symbol to a growing number of radicalised, despairing suburban teens becoming caught up with the geopolitics of events in far-off lands.

It’s a moniker they don’t want. And they get angry when we talk about the arrested teens plotting an attack with knives and swords in the name of their son. .

“We just want peace for our family — and Australia,” says the father.

He has the death stare of a grieving parent in shock but then suddenly, when his son is mentioned, leaps up, pacing the floor with frenetic energy.

Then at times he stoops down to comfort his silently weeping wife seated on a cream dining room chair.

It’s a distressing scene, one you wouldn’t wish on any parent — no matter what your views on their son.

The couple, who are both in their 50s, are trying to stay strong for their two other sons. They are hanging on. Barely.

“We are on antidepressants, it’s very, very hard,” Numan’s mother, still in deep mourning wearing a long black dress, reveals between her sobs.

“He was my boy, my precious son — he was a lovely person, he used to be so helpful, he used to help me cook in the kitchen.”

They don’t shed any light on any of their son’s alleged links to senior IS members, or any behaviour that could give clues to the turn of events that unfolded on September 23.

They thought he wanted a new passport so he could take a relaxing holiday before starting a four-year-long apprenticeship.

“We had no clue, no concerns at all,” insists Numan’s mother. For now they are “desperate” to see any CCTV footage of the incident in which their son ended up dead.

“We hear nothing, nothing,” says the father.

“The police took a statement from us at the time and since then we have heard nothing.

“We are waiting for the full police report so we can find out the truth — it can’t bring our son back but that’s what we spend our days waiting for.”

I leave and they turn back to sit together in their cold sitting room, to carry on their never ending journey of confusion and grief.