Adrift in London, on 7.7.2005
By Femi Olugbile
It is twenty years now since that terrible morning when you woke up alone in a friend’s apartment in Colindale, to discover that all the world had gone crazy, or so it seemed. London was under attack from suicide bombers.
For a moment you thought you were dreaming, some sort of hypnagogic hallucination from which you could rescue yourself by burying your head under the pillow and hoping for a spell of quieter, more normal sleep from which you would wake up later, well rested.
London is a city with a long memory, and the British people have a great fondness for memorialising the story of their lives.
Last Monday, an interdenominational service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral to remember the dead – fifty-two of them, not counting the four suicide bombers who wreaked the carnage, and the seven hundred Londoners of various nationalities who sustained injuries on that hellish day. Many of the physical and psychological wounds are yet to fully heal, even now.
It was a holiday you had squeezed out for yourself, in the teeth of work pressure. A reengagement with the self was needed, to listen to your inner voice and do only the things you wanted to do, which sometimes included nothing. Workaday life involved leading a team that ran an ambitious, underfunded Teaching Hospital which provided services to huge numbers of Lagosians daily and tried to perform exotic medical feats on a shoestring budget. This was your story, five years on, and still counting. It had its high moments, but it could be enervating. The ambience, too, was a slippery terrain populated with jostling and backbiting, and a sneaking feeling that some around were secretly working in cahoots with higher-ups to undermine you.
It was the second week of the holiday. A languid routine of late bedtimes and waking up late had settled in. For the day itself, you just went with the drift. Occasionally the spur of the moment decision was a ride on top of a double decker bus from Edgeware to the city centre. It was a long, slow ride that wended through back streets, eventually emerging onto the clogged up inner city riot of Marble Arch and Oxford Street near Selfridges. From there, a leisurely walk through the jostling throng; perhaps a film or an early theatre offering at the West End, followed by a Chinese meal. You jumped back on a bus, or headed back to Colindale on the Underground, and that was the day, ‘done and dusted’.
The scenario of lying in bed and watching the horror and chaos of an evolving crisis unfold on BBC television took on a Kafkaesque dimension, and for a moment you did not know whether to laugh or cry. You tried to reach family and friends in town and back in Lagos on phone. The lines were congested.
As the day progressed, facts began to emerge.
Four young men had detonated home-made explosives in different parts of the London Transport system, clearly intending to kill and maim as many people as possible. Three of the explosions occurred aboard Underground trains in the inner city – at precisely 8.49 am, on the Circle Line near Aldgate, at Edgeware Road, and on the Piccadilly Line, near Russell Square. Almost an hour later, a fourth bomb was set off on the top deck of a double decker bus in Tavistock Square, ripping off the roof and sending the rear portion of the bus flying like a kite, at a site close to the headquarters of the British Medical Association.
You followed the reports with a sickening fascination.
There was initial confusion about how many explosions had occurred. There was a palpable dread in the air that more places in the city could be facing imminent attack.
The dire nature of the situation could be seen from the demeanour of the Police, Fire Fighters and other Emergency workers who quickly appeared on the scene, with sirens blaring.
In time, it would emerge that three of the bombers, ranging in age from 18 years to 30 years, were British born children of Pakistani parents. The fourth was a Muslim convert from a Jamaican family. They had taken off together from the Luton train station earlier that day on their mission.
For context, Tony Blair was Prime Minister, and the ‘War on Terror’ embarked upon in the aftermath of the ‘9-11’ attacks in USA was still ranging in different parts of the world. The ‘Second Gulf War’, predicated on false, supposedly ‘slam dunk’ Intelligence concerning Saddam Hussein’s ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ was ongoing too. The domestic popularity of Tony Blair, suave and brilliant proponent of ‘The Third Way’ was massively, and irreparably damaged by his reckless dragging of the UK into the war to overthrow Saddam, alongside USA.
To some extent, Britain was a divided society, and some people were able to pitch the War on Terror as a war against their religion. Video statements by two of the suicide bombers would later reveal this as their motivation. ‘The Hook’, a hell-raising fanatic now in life-imprisonment without parole in the USA for terrorism, had up till recently been holding court at a mosque in Finsbury Park, preaching hate. One of the bombers, as would emerge later, had attended the mosque.
In the evening, you took a walk in the streets. A semblance of calm had returned, as people went about their normal lives. You scrutinised the faces of people you passed, looking for worry, suspicion even. Sometimes you thought you gleaned fear.
Over the ensuing days human angle stories of the dead and injured, as well as the heroism of bystanders and emergency workers would emerge.
The tragedy was borne home somewhat when a Nigerian lady who had lost her son appeared and spoke movingly on television. It was a name you recognised – you had attended Government College, Ibadan with the victim’s father, also a Medical Doctor.
London would not forget 7.7.2005. Neither would you.
