Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.08.2005, Page 16

Mourning The Old Giant
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
(William Wordsworth, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,
September 3, 1802)
On the morning of the bombings I had been sleeping
when the telephone rang out three times and stopped.
This short unanswered punch into my sleep dragged me
from the safety of my slumber and delivered me into the
arms of the chaos that was unfolding on my television.
The scenes of injured, bloody people lying debilitated on
the pavement in London. The terrorists had drawn their
new front line right through the gardens, homes, schools,
streets and straight through the hearts of every man,
woman and child of this city.
For the many years of my childhood and recent life
I grew up with London having the image that it was a
magically big, creaking and harmless old giant, a city
with vibrancy, each smell dynamic, every language new,
all faces different and unique but not this terrifying
monster that I was seeing now.
People in London had subconsciously been
anticipating terrorist attacks since 9/11 and with the
ever increasing activities in Iraq, tension about security
had heightened but that didn’t stop London going about
its business, staying positive about every day life, this
incessant spirit is what connects people to this giant city.
The day after the bombings it was of no surprise to me
that London picked itself up and carried on defiantly.
London didn’t have the shocking impact that the
pictures from 9/11 had, or the political upheavals that the
Madrid bombings triggered, but as the identities of the
bombers came to light, the unbelievable fact that not only
were the attackers suicide bombers (a first in Western
Europe) but that they were young disenchanted men who
were a product of British society.
As a kid I had lived in the cosmopolitan borough of
Hackney, which was one of the poorest places to live in
Western Europe. London was like a fantasy place for
me, everything amazing. At school, the children who
attended had stories that were as if conjured from the
tongues of great storytellers. One friend, a Vietnamese
refugee, had fled his country during the later stages of the
infamous war, on a boat with his family. During transit
they were spotted and shot at by the Khmer Rouge, apart
from my friend and his two brothers, the whole family
died, leaving the brothers to drift along in the boat for
three days, feigning death, lying amongst the bodies of
his dead relatives until they found safety. Later on it was
London that gave them a home, security and a future.
Stories of this magnitude and staggering humanity
are commonplace in this city, which plays host to 300
different languages and ethnicities.
Now finding myself thousands of miles away in
Iceland with incidents still escalating in London, I stop
and look at my new hosts directly in the eyes. I have
found that Icelanders tend to generally have a knack of
staring at you so intensely you can feel the holes burning
through the back of your head as they are working out
which country you are from, but normally as soon as
I open my mouth and the slur of my English accent
sprouts forth, I am always greeted with the greatest of
warm smiles and a huge handshake. More recently since
the tragic events, people have been much warmer towards
me, giving their condolences and support. A friend of
mine pointed out to me that London is in some ways
closer to the heart of Icelanders now than to any other
foreign place, even above Copenhagen, with many big
Icelandic businesses, students and travellers regularly
being based in London, it is a special place to a lot of my
new friends.
Looking through the local papers the biggest thing
hitting the headlines at the moment are subjects akin to
“…Guðmundur catches 13lb salmon”, this in contrast to
“…suspected suicide bomber taken out on tube by police”, in
London, seems rather dull but reassuringly so.
By Stephen Taylor-Matthews