LONDON BLASTS AND BRITAIN'S DILEMMAS
AIJAZ AHMAD
I have been in London for just over two weeks, living in a friend's flat on a quiet street, about a mile away from King's Cross where a bus - M30, which I have sometimes taken to go to the British Library - was burnt down to cinders, not too far from the Library, with many but still undetermined number of casualties. I did not know of the attacks and found out when I came out of the flat into the street, and a young woman, scantily clad, with pierced nose and lip, perfectly composed in demeanour, stopped me to ask for directions to walk to Camden Town. I told her that she would have to walk for well over an hour and would be well advised to take a bus or the underground. Well, she had already walked from King's Cross, all London transport was at a standstill, and - then she told me what had happened, in a surprisingly matter-of-fact tone, assuming that it was the work of Al Qaeda but with none of the unease and suspicion of my skin colour, none of the anti-Muslim hysteria that would have been the case in New York or Los Angeles. She thought I was a fellow-Londoner and she was sharing with me the woes of "our city". I decided to assume this odd identity of a fellow-Londoner that she had bestowed upon me and said, "We should have never invaded Iraq!" She looked sideways, paused and said, "Yes, that was wrong."
I have been in London for just over two weeks, living in a friend's flat on a quiet street, about a mile away from King's Cross where a bus - M30, which I have sometimes taken to go to the British Library - was burnt down to cinders, not too far from the Library, with many but still undetermined number of casualties. I did not know of the attacks and found out when I came out of the flat into the street, and a young woman, scantily clad, with pierced nose and lip, perfectly composed in demeanour, stopped me to ask for directions to walk to Camden Town. I told her that she would have to walk for well over an hour and would be well advised to take a bus or the underground. Well, she had already walked from King's Cross, all London transport was at a standstill, and - then she told me what had happened, in a surprisingly matter-of-fact tone, assuming that it was the work of Al Qaeda but with none of the unease and suspicion of my skin colour, none of the anti-Muslim hysteria that would have been the case in New York or Los Angeles. She thought I was a fellow-Londoner and she was sharing with me the woes of "our city". I decided to assume this odd identity of a fellow-Londoner that she had bestowed upon me and said, "We should have never invaded Iraq!" She looked sideways, paused and said, "Yes, that was wrong."
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