4 LETTERS FOR 4 BOMBINGS

Dear Yason,

I’m fine, though it was rather near the club and on lines I often travel on. We haven’t opened tonight as the underground isn’t running and a lot of the area around King’s Cross was closed.

As someone who lived through Hitler’s bombings in the war – all our windows at the back of the house, including my bedroom, were blown out while we were in the air-raid shelter, and then the IRA bombings in the 1970s, one of which we heard during our Christmas party at the University – I feel that the chances of being involved are quite small and you cannot let these s***s rule your lives. If you change your life very much then they have won.

During all this time London has changed considerably. How many different languages can you hear on the Underground? At least nine per journey in the central areas. As to colors and races, even more. A visiting friend commented on how nice it was to see children of obviously many different races playing happily together as they traveled home after school.

Then, in the midst of this, the bombs.

What did they achieve? Apart from killing people and causing damage, some travel disruption and distress – not much. The Moslem still sits on the bus in the row next to the Christian, with a man in a turban in the row behind, while a Jew is alongside a ginger-haired Englishman who is talking to a jet-black African on the seat next to him and the Chinese. A mixed-race gay couple at the back have no thoughts other than for each other.

What did they want to achieve? I think it was racial strife. They want the hotheads – yes, there may have been one on the bus, too – to bomb mosques, to throw bricks, to paint graffiti, to fuel discord and dissent and get them more recruits. But they will have a very hard job. I, as many others, have worked with a Jew, a Moslem, a black West Indian. I have a good friend from Sri Lanka and another from Nigeria. I have friends who are gay. The wife in the newspaper shop wears a sari... We know that with all our different backgrounds we have similar feelings and needs, and deep down we know they were not involved.

I am afraid that there may be more trouble, but I will still travel, work, and party in London, and London life will go on. Hitler’s bombs couldn’t stop it, nor could the IRA. We Londoners are a very tough bunch.

John Winn
King’s Cross, London

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I had plans today! I was going to: go to a vintage shop in Goodge street and try and flog some old Hussein Chalayan off for a bit of extra cash. I was also going to stop by Notting Hill and sell some old CDs. Afterwards I had planned to swing by my mum’s house in Waterloo and tidy up my old bedroom so my mum could use my old room as a study. Plans. Strange to think that whilst I had my plans, as did the rest of London, someone else had theirs. And theirs, unlike mine, came to fruition. As I slumped down on the sofa at 9 a.m. to watch the morning news, I was expecting to see Olympic celebrations and Tessa Jowell, smarmy and flushed, slapping Ken Livingstone on the back. Just after 9 there was breaking news that there had been a few power surges on the tube that had resulted in explosions and that people were being evacuated. I was concerned and vexed that I would have to get the bus, but then the other news stopped and the breaking news turned into a wave of news. Four, five, six, seven BOMBS had/were exploding. Definitely bombs because one was on a bus in Russell Square round the corner from where I was living just two summers ago, and a bomb between Liverpool Street and Aldgate East where plenty of my friends live and where I go to college. (At one point seven was the number reported though it turned out to be four after the confusion had subsided.) Numbly I watched without shock or surprise as many fire fighters, medics and policemen came and worked through the chaos. People with blackened faces, dazed. Crying all over. I looked at the time. It was nearly 12 and Blair had left the G8. Shit. The G8. Who is going to care about millions of Africans right now when a handful of our citizens have suffered this outrage? Climate change, what about climate change? The roof of a bus had just flown off, the blood of British people was splattered in the streets. Blair came on to the screen, artificially emotional, stressing that the British way of life must continue. Right. So we’ve all got to carry on drinking beer and reading The Sun? Okay, I can do that now, but what after? All I know is that 50-and-counting people are dead and it isn’t just the terrorists who killed them. It’s all of us, our whole Western society and what it’s doing to the rest of the world. What do we plan to do about our own responsibility for what happened?

Ada Zandinton
Waterloo, London

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Luckily for me, I was in the psychiatric ward due to auditory, visual and olfactory hallucinations that lasted for two weeks! So I’m safe and well because they’ve got me on the right cocktail of meds to keep me sanish.

Jazz McCarthy
West Kensington, London

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Sure, it was small compared to 9/11, but here’s a thought: the IRA killed 21 people in Omagh, Northern Ireland, in the early ’90’s and that was considered a new low by account of the loss of lives. The London bomb killed over 70 (latest figures), so as for the UK, this is by far our worst terrorist attack. I think everybody knew sooner or later this was going to happen here, it was just a question of when. I was lucky, I was at home. My twin brother travels through Aldgate every morning, so that was disconcerting; he was luckily traveling a bit later. The roads around the bomb sites are still closed. It’s rubbish, we didn’t really get a proper chance to celebrate winning the Olympic bid. So it just makes everyone miserable again. They say they are certain now the terrorists are British-born. They keep showing that pic of it blown up with dazed passengers. When you read the stories of those that died it’s so sad, really. It being London, it killed people from all ethnic groups.

David Lock
Southwark, London

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