It’s Friday night in London. I’m sitting in a café on Charing Cross Road listening to a police siren wail. It dopplers away from me. It’s hard to make sense of the many feelings evoked within me over the last twenty-four hours. I’ve heard so many people and read so many words about what it means. I’ve had enough. This is my home being dissected, being given a bloody post-mortem. None of it helps clarify what is going on inside me. Being on the streets helps somewhat. Visiting the places that I know so well, passing the places where the bombs hit, also places I know well, seems to help.

Part of me just craves silence. To simply take in what has happened, to let it sit and become whatever it wants to become. A hopeless and forlorn wish. If nothing else, the bombs have let loose a cascade of words. It’s already too late to sense what emotions and thoughts might have emerged from the fact of the bombs. The only reasonable response is to filter out those ideas and emotions that are not mine, filter out the things that I’m somehow, for some reason supposed to feel.

Does the air in London feel different? Does it feel sober? Is it quiet? Does the air taste different? I can’t tell if it’s my imagination. Are things are different? Well, they’re obviously different, I'm different, but how? I don’t know. At one level everything seems the same. People going about their business, the cafes are busy and the tube is full. Maybe there are less people reading newspapers and books. There are more people just looking thoughtful, sitting and doing nothing. There are headlines everywhere about "London Bombs".

I feel disconnected. What has happened does not feel real. There’s a tiny twinge of guilt that I’m not more emotional. Is it shock? Maybe. I don’t know. We shall see.

At the mosque this afternoon there were two police-women standing outside, in fluorescent bright yellow-jackets. One was quite old. I couldn’t help but think “police-women? That’s quite odd. I wonder what that means?” The mullah reminded us that it was for our own good and we should be respectful. I saw a young man talking to them. Later on in the local donar kebab place a young laughing Somali boy put his friend in a head-lock, yelling “you’re under arrest!” White people looked on blankly.

I meet Jonathan in Angel, a mile away from Kings Cross. He tells me that he searched the news for anyone talking about why this might have happened and found nothing. I reflect on this. He’s right. No one once ventures a reason. It’s the same as 9-11. There can be no reason. The one essay that falls into my inbox claims pretty much the same thing. The why is that the people who did this are an anachronism, literally embodying something from “the Crusades” – people who are backward, less evolved (than whom?), people who do not respect life. I’m furious at the essay. It doesn’t help, it labels, reduces, dismisses, alienates and soothes. These are not energies we would ever revert to it claims. We, the civilised. It does not help. It is wrong. There are reasons.

I struggle with myself. I don’t want to preach. I don’t want to lecture. Yet I’ve been carrying one question around for the last twenty-four hours. Why is no one talking about injustice? Surely it’s obvious? Surely we all know that the prime cause of terrorism, of such acts is injustice? Surely we know that if terrorism is madness then it’s a madness caused squarely by being a victim of forces beyond comprehension? By being on the receiving end of an intolerable amount of injustice? Of having no tears left, of being drained of empathy.

I search around me in vain for empathy. I can see courage, bravery, bluster, pain, fear, sadness, but no empathy. No empathy and no justice.

This is my home.

Zaid Hassan | Friday, July 8, 2005