Back on the Piccadilly

Saturday, August 6

I was going to jog to work. But I just had to go in by tube this week when I learnt that the Piccadilly Line was finally back up and running after the deadliest of the London bombings had put it out of action.

After all, my stop is Russell Square and my habitual carriage is the first – the doomed first.

It was my duty as a Londoner and a mildly eerie experience.

At least, four TV crews awaited me when I got off on Thursday, along with several newspaper journos.

“No autographs please!” I thought.

10 minutes earlier I had been on a half-empty tube carriage, just like the one blown to smithereens on July 7.

It’s August, when it tends to be quiet anyway, but it was definitely emptier than usual as I ventured from deep in Zone 2 into central London.

There were still seats after Kings Cross – unheard of.

If I was a bookie, I would have given odds of 11/8 against all the seats being taken up between Kings Cross through to Hammersmith and beyond.

A Guardian-reading businessman crossed himself as he got on at King’s Cross.

I caught myself doing likewise a few minutes later, for some div reason, and strangely hoped than an Asian woman in front of me had not noticed.

But I was alright. OF COURSE I WAS ALRIGHT!!

Click here for another perspective on travelling on London Transport in the aftermath of the London bombings – this time from an Indian Londoner. Question:  as an Asian, or vaguely foreign-looking Londoner, what type of magazine do you carry to reassure fellow passengers that you are not a potential suicide bomber? The Economist? Wired?

Wednesday, July 13
As a non-practising catholic I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Moslem population of this country and, especially, of this unique city, London.
People can – and will -- debate about who exactly is “in denial” over the Iraq War question until the cows come home; whether the global threat of Al Qaeda was already such that it needed to be squarely confronted or whether the invasion of Iraq made a bad situation worse by radicalising and alienating even more young men from a particular subset of communities.
The way I see it, there were people intent on attacking our way of life long before George Custer Bush set his sights on Baghdad. But then, would they have persuaded four of our fellow citizens to do their dirty work for them if he hadn’t? How can we be sure? I mean really sure?
The answer is we can’t.
What seems undeniable is that we have allowed the preachers of hate into our midst because we have tolerated intolerant regimes abroad. And they have flourished here and brainwashed some of our more naive fellow citizens because they have been ripe for brainwashing.
We have blundered with our foreign policy, our asylum policy and our social policies and this is the price we have to pay.
It’s hardly surprising that a siege mentality has built up around Britain’s Moslem communities. But those on the outside are not the only people who can be accused of being “in denial”. Mosques can be built in Britain but churches can’t in Saudi Arabia, and neither can reasoned arguments that God does not exist.
We all need to appreciate just what we’ve got here in London.
Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, Fallujah – these places are systematically reeled off by some angry young British Moslems caught on camera as they seek to highlight western double standards when it comes to coverage of the London bombings.
But what about Kosovo, when a similarly controversial military campaign put an end to the persecution of a Moslem population by a Christian one as western leaders sought to avoid another Bosnia?
What about other examples of Western neglect, such as Rwanda, the dirty wars of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, Cambodia, Tibet, the Congolese civil war, Darfur?
What about the bloody persecution of non-Moslem populations by Moslem populations, as in Indonesia, East Timor, Pakistan, Southern Sudan, Turkey?
What about Moslem inhumanity to other Moslems, as in the Iran-Iraq war, the Algerian civil war, the war in Aceh, and, yes, in some cases the treatment of women.
The list goes on and on and that’s because these things are never as simple as the mad mullahs make out.
But my fellow Brits – Moslem Brits – do have a big point that urgently needs addressing: this whole issue of labelling terrorists as “Moslem terrorists” or even “Islamist terrorists” needs urgent rethinking.
It might convenient shorthand and journalistic parleese but it tars over a billion people with the same brush and accentuates the sense of alienation and persecution.
We are all in this together, whatever our views.
I wouldn’t like it if the IRA were called “catholic terrorists” and the press have long ceased with headlines about “black muggers” or “black rapists”.
This isn’t political correctness. It’s called respect. It’s also the London way.

Thursday, July 7
We knew it was coming. We just knew.
And yet, it was still a shock whan it came: indiscrimante attacks on our crowded tube trains and buses, and only hours after our Olympic triumph.
In our concealed nightmares, though, the potential carnage was always a lot worse.
Sure, the death toll at 37 is certain to rise. It could hit three figures, like in Madrid.
And my heart goes out to any Londoner who has a lost a loved one, not least on the Picadilly Line between Kings Cross and Russell Square, which I regularly frequent. I bet it was the first carriage; the one that gets ram at Kings Cross because it comes to a rest by the connecting stairs.
But in the balmy light of day, as i struggled to get home with my fellow citizens, it was clear that absolutely nothing had changed.
People of every nationality, race and religion were still chilling, going about their business and making the most of the July sun.
It was a beautiful London thing.
There was even a spring in my step as I and several hundred others strolled home through Highbury Fields.
Al Qaeda: Is that all you got?