Naser Yazdanpanah runs a hairdressing and tailoring service in Malmo. Last weekend he was ironing a pair of trousers when he heard what he thought were rocks being thrown at his shop window. It turned out to be gunshots.
“I jumped out and grabbed this guy and shouted for help, but he head-butted me in the teeth and ran away,” he said.
As an Iranian living in Malmo, Yazdanpanah knows all about the gunman stalking immigrants in the city, whom police have blamed for a series of 15 shootings in the past year. He thought the attacker might have chosen him for a reason, since earlier in the day he had taken part in a protest against the shootings.
Detectives have not linked his case to the others, but Yazdanpanah said the community is anxious.
“You can’t describe what it feels like to be working in your shop one moment and then finding yourself being shot at the next,” said Yazdanpanah, 58, who has lived in Malmo for 12 years. “I’m not shocked, I’m not scarred. I’m trying to fight this and get on with it. It’s very sad what is happening [with the shootings], but we are dealing with a sick person.”
He went to hospital, but opened the shop again later the same day.
“I don’t want people to get upset that they are not getting their clothes done, just because I’m sitting here talking,” he said, pointing to the clothes piling up on the table next to his sewing machine.
After the incident, the press descended on his shop, with flowers and greetings pouring in from his customers.
“Look at this place, it’s turned into a flower shop,” he said.
Two weeks ago, a 28-year-old man was shot in the back waiting at a bus stop in nearby Nydala. Standing near the stop on Sunday, Viraz Faik said everyone was worried about their security.
“It’s very uncomfortable for us as immigrants to know that there is somebody out there who is after us. You can’t stop thinking about it,” she said.
Faik, who is from Iraq, is getting married soon and is planning to move to Austria with her husband. She is worried about guests’ safety at her wedding.
“I have got people from my school attending the wedding here in Nydala, so I’m nervous,” said Faik, 23, who has lived in the area for 10 years.
The attacks on the estate in the Fosie district have drawn the attention of the Swedish press, and Social Democrats leader Mona Sahlin, who visited in the wake of the shooting.
In the past few weeks, police have intensified their presence on the streets of Malmo, drafting in an extra 50 officers from neighboring districts, but there has been no breakthrough in the hunt for the gunman. Inside the greengrocer’s in Nydala’s central park area, the owner, Hussein Muhammad, says he has noticed a difference in people’s attitude since the shootings.
“At 6pm it gets really quiet around here. It wasn’t like that before. Before the shootings people were hanging around here all night, but now it gets completely quiet. I stay open as usual, but it’s affected the business,” he said.
He lives about 2km away, in the central area of Mollevangen, but says he is not worried about traveling home at night.
“What’s going to happen is going to happen, no matter what you do. Of course you have to be careful, but the [gunman] is coming up behind people, so what can you do?” he said. “You are concerned because you had never thought this was going to happen in Sweden.”
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