Intelligence

So how would you behave sitting next to an agitated man on the top of a bus?

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By David Aaronovitch
On the streets yesterday there was a peculiar mood. People were being unusually careful with each other, and on the Tube they were asking themselves: who is sitting in the carriage? Do they look doomed?

WE DESCRIBE terror first in relation to the body. Survivors pass the injured and note the blood and dust. A doctor who has specialised in helping epileptics has his leg amputated.

The statistics are those killed and hurt. And the uninjured face physical “chaos” as they attempt to move from one place to another. But what has it done to our heads? Because, for most people, that’s where terror lives.

Yesterday morning I met up with two friends, both “shrinks”. One remarked on the constant use of the word “calm” to describe survivors of the attacks. “People in shock,” he said, “are quiet. They don’t make much noise. They are calm.” It’s the ones running about shouting, he suggested, who you don’t have to worry about. He thought that the media coverage, the rolling news, hadn’t helped. By speculating on death and casualties the broadcasters focused attention on the threat, but by not knowing precise facts they made this threat more general, more encompassing, than it actually was.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, had got it right. Refusing to play the guessing game, he simply told his televised press conference that he had important messages for the public about what to do. One of my friends explained the importance of being told, gently, by someone in authority, that there was a plan.

The danger was the one that showed itself after Soham. So much coverage, so much talk about death and children — without any attempt at context — had affected large numbers of kids, who could easily imagine that there were now people out there wanting to take them, drown them and burn their bodies. I remember one child who wouldn’t go on Hampstead Heath for a year “because of Soham”.

My other friend predicted, based on previous attacks, how people would now build 7/7 into their fantasies. How would they behave if they were sitting close to a strangely agitated man on the top of the bus?

Would they take the risk, challenge him, deftly reaching into the bag in one lightning movement and pulling the wire away from the detonator? Or would they scoot downstairs, tell the driver what they’d seen, get off and run? But then, as he explained, this exercise in imagination could be a good thing. Maybe, one day, it would help someone to identify and stop a terrorist. Who knows?

What was already obvious from e-mails, chatrooms and newspaper reports was the guilty pleasure that could be derived from being a distant part of the story. Mostly these were tales about friends. A close acquaintance evacuated from the area after having heard an explosion might be worth, say, 20 story points. One who saw the aftermath of a bomb, say, 40. And a friend who was in the next carriage? A hundred.

And then there were the projections on to the bombers themselves. Experts in the media debated the difference between al-Qaeda “affiliation” and al-Qaeda “influenced” as though they had met the bombers personally. A correspondent to the letters page of this newspaper imagined that the culprits were part of the increased number of immigrants allowed in under Mr Blair.

In Parliament George Galloway exhibited what might be called psychotic empathy in telling MPs that the terrorists were, beyond any doubt, animated by the same motives that animated him — albeit using different methods. It was all down to Iraq. The logical problem with this over-identification should have been pretty obvious. If these bombs were about Iraq, what was the Bali bomb about? That was before Iraq, but after Afghanistan. But if Bali was about capturing Kabul, what was 9/11 for, coming as it did before either intervention? That was because of Israel/US bases/the desire for a Caliphate/hatred of Western decadence. So, if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, hadn’t invaded Afghanistan, hadn’t allowed Israel to be established, hadn’t had feminism and whorehouses, hadn’t been rich, hadn’t been democratic, then maybe, maybe, we wouldn’t have been bombed. It’s a story.

On the streets there was a peculiar mood. The woman in the health shop was cross with two customers who had complained about the cost of vitamin supplements. “All these bombs yesterday, all these deaths, and all they can do is moan about prices,” she told me, angrily, neatly displacing her anxiety.

Elsewhere the bombings had taken the conversational role usually occupied by the weather. “What about yesterday?” the newsagent said to me.

“Terrible!” “Really awful.”

Most noticeably, though, people were being unusually careful with each other, as though worried that violence could break out at any moment. There was a decorousness at zebra crossings. There was less solipsistic bustle. Perhaps this fragile etiquette was down to not knowing who it is you might need to rely on if suddenly something happened and the 268, straining past, exploded and changed your world.

The Tube was oddest of all. People getting on would give occupants sidelong looks. Who’s sitting in the carriage? Do they look doomed? Would it be better to be at the front or in the middle? I found myself making gradations of threat.

Two large African women with two large suitcases probably equalled zero menace. Slightly more worrying, perhaps, was the smart Asian (a doctor? a lawyer?) with the attaché case. There weren’t any young Arab men with duffel bags. Probably too scared to travel since becoming everybody else’s possible nightmare.

In the local gym I was finding it hard to get going. The atmosphere here, too, was different. It was only after half an hour that I realised what the problem was. The radio station that blares out from the speakers was not playing its usual thumping music-to-bash-treadmills-to collection. Instead we were slowing down to a succession of mournful ballads, and the conscious decision of the broadcasters was affecting us all at the unconscious level.

A bit like the bombers, really.

July 8, 2005 at 10:27 PM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home