Mark McGinness
November 10, 2026 — 12:01am
“This pain will pass. This hurt will end. Tomorrow, you will still be here. Tomorrow, you will still be a good man. This is important.”
This is the mantra repeatedly invoked throughout a brutal life by the beloved mother of Ahmed Al Ahmed. It has been nearly a year since Al Ahmed tackled and disarmed the elder of the Bondi terrorists, Sajid Akram, a supporter of the Islamic State.
With 16 dead and 38 injured, it was Australia’s deadliest mass attack since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. As the first anniversary looms, Al Ahmed’s account has arrived: Light Will Win, the story of his life and that dark day.
With the aid of one of the country’s most accomplished ghostwriters, Liam Pieper – who was also behind Eddie Jaku’s bestselling The Happiest Man on Earth – Al Ahmed intersperses a scene-by-scene record of his actions on the day with chapters from his life.
It is an artful, novelistic device to sustain suspense but as this is non-fiction and the dreadful outcome is already known, it can be almost annoying to see one chapter (“Bondi, 6:47pm”) end with “That was when the first bullet hit me. It wouldn’t be the last,” only for the next to begin: “Dubai, 2000s: To me, seeing Dubai was like seeing into the future … ”
Yet although this structure is the work of Pieper, his editors, and his publisher, Al Ahmed’s voice can still be heard beneath it all. And when it surfaces, it is decent, modest, dogged, forbearing and brave.
Born in 1980 in Al-Nayrab, Syria, near the Turkish border, Al Ahmed was the eldest child of Malakeh and Mohamed Fateh Al Ahmed, an ambitious shepherd and brutal father.
As his father rose through the Assad regime’s police force, the family followed – to Latakia, Masyaf, Aleppo, Jableh. Put to work from the age of nine, Al Ahmed was a friendless outsider who frequently missed school.
After national service, including six months of barbaric conscript training in the Syrian police force that eclipsed his father’s cruelty, he fled to Dubai. Backed by a cousin’s sponsorship, he gained a working visa for Australia, qualified as a carpenter, and became a citizen.
In 2012 he met and wed Alsu, an Australian of Russian heritage, and established his own construction company. After a work injury led to an anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, he opened a shop in Sutherland as a stopgap.
In October 2025, he welcomed his much-loved mother and his father, who retained the mentality of a small-town Syrian police sergeant.
To the day itself: December 14, 2025.
Al Ahmed met a cousin and they drove to Bondi, a place he loved. In search of coffee, he came upon the Chanukah festival, illuminated by a giant menorah and filled with families celebrating the Jewish festival.
It was 6:40pm when the shooting began. A figure in black was “shooting calmly, almost casually at people as they tried to escape”. As he saw Sajid, the second attacker, metres in front of him, Al Ahmed ran and jumped on his back, wrestling the gun from him. He heard himself say to Sajid, “You motherf----r. You piece of shit.”
Al Ahmed notes his English had improved only slowly, but two decades on Aussie building sites had clearly given him a solid grasp of the vernacular. He pointed the weapon at the elder Akram, who backed away, before propping it against a palm tree.
When the younger Akram fired, Al Ahmed took cover behind the palm. It saved him, but he slipped and took five bullets. Returning to the bridge, police shot both Akrams, killing Sajid and wounding his son.
Someone from a balcony across the road filmed Al Ahmed’s bravery and the 12-second clip pinged around the world as he lay in hospital. US President Trump called him “a hero of the world”. Soon at his bedside were Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Governor-General Sam Mostyn, bearing flowers chosen by the King.
Ahmed’s elder daughter, Sofia, asked why he hadn’t tackled the second shooter on the bridge. Others asked why he didn’t shoot Sajid. His response: “I had not been given the right to take a life.”
This rings true to the nature of the man gleaned from his story – how he has responded to cruelty and violence throughout his life. And this is a very violent book. Yet even during his military service, he had never fired a gun.
A subsequent $2.5 million GoFundMe campaign sparked a fallout with his father and brothers – charges of assault and intimidation laid against Al Ahmed were later withdrawn by police – in a saga tellingly omitted from the book.
After all the hoopla and acclaim, Al Ahmed says: “When this is done, when the cameras are no longer on me, I am still a dad, and a builder … ”
These sentiments have an authenticity to them, but one continues to wonder: what here is Al Ahmed’s and what is the ghostwriter’s? Rather than the brief acknowledgement on the second-to-last page of the book, shouldn’t Macmillan have at least put “with Liam Pieper” on the cover – not so much to give him credit but to alert us to this commercial confection?
Light Will Win still gives us a good sense of who Ahmed Al Ahmed is – his decency and heroism shine through – but the most potent proof of this is that 12-second clip from December 14.
Light Will Win by Ahmed Al Ahmed is published by Macmillan ($37).
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Source: The Age · Mark McGinness
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- World
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- 🇦🇺 AU
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- EN
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