The Sound of Silence

Today, for the first time, I felt proud to be a Londoner. Many’s a time that I have ranted to excess about the capital’s pollution, overcrowding, inflated house prices, litter, and decrepit public transport. But it is only since last Thursday that I have grown to understand what this metropolis stands for and have discovered that its citizens do care about it deeply. More importantly, they care about each other more passionately than I could ever have imagined from their previously impassive faces. The floral tributes outside the sites of the bombings are heart-rending and represent every community that has made our town its home. And London has picked itself up and carried on like you wouldn’t believe. Of course, in many ways we didn’t have a choice – we have bills to pay, and going to work is the only way we can do that. But nonetheless, tube trains are packed to the hilt in soaring temperatures, scarlet buses are gridlocked along every thoroughfare and people have taken to its streets in droves. Yes, people look furtively at one another whenever a passenger with a rucksack clambers aboard, yes, bus drivers demand the owner of every bag of shopping makes themself known and yes, we all have the godawful fear that just because we were lucky the last time doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen again at any moment, and this time to us, but still there is this overwhelming sense of “Fuck you!”. The terrorists will never win. Though that is a phrase steeped in government rhetoric, right now it seems that nothing will break this capital’s spirit, nothing will make its multi-national, multi-faith and multi-cultural races turn on each other. The only thing that frightens us are the hideous articles in the American press claiming that the UK is too soft on Muslims and that “Londonistan” has become a breeding ground for terrorists plotting to attack America. The apparent belief Stateside that every Muslim is a terrorist is utterly appalling and just preaches the kind of Bushite ignorance that keeps me awake at night. Presumably the Republican government also believes that we should adopt their own practices towards Muslims – such as giving every citizen a gun to shoot them with, locking them up without trial and abusing them in federal jails.

Today, though, London fell completely silent. I have never witnessed anything so moving or empowering. It took no one to organise us – across the city, at the stroke of noon, people poured out of their houses and offices onto the streets. Buses and taxis stopped, car engines switched off, and everyone stood with their heads bowed for two deeply reflective minutes. I’d always thought I’d want to flee London once the terrorist assault happened, but today, this moment of us reclaiming our world, made me want to stay.

Today would have been my mother’s 59th birthday. As the noise of nothingness spoke so many words I thought of her too, robbed of her chance to grow older by a dreadful disease. But so many of those the terrorists have slaughtered were younger even than me – they have lost everything, and we must honour them, remember them, lest we should forget that a split second can take us from a full and happy life into the great abyss of death.