‘Things are getting awfully deep, awfully deep, I can’t get no sleep’. Well, I’ve been catching up on the shut-eye after some jet lag. I got back last Wednesday from a day short of three weeks overseas (London, England and San Diego & Los Angeles, California) with most of that time coughing and sneezing and trying to unclog my sinuses. London was pollen central and Cali is famous for its allergens. Poor health was compounded by the aftershock of the London bombings. My partner and I left Heathrow the evening before Thursday 7 July. My brother, brother-in-law and father often take those trains during the morning rush hour. Fortunately, they were OK. In fact, I’d taken the Aldgate train, and gone through Edgware Road station on another tube train myself a few days before on a jaunt to Honest Jon’s, a record store on Portobello Road. These terrible events turn the banal geography of the everyday inside out, yet ‘normality’ does return, even if a mildly disturbing hum of anxiety is ever present in the background.
Despite the health tribulations (yep, I know I sound like a whiny hypochondriac Woody Allen), the trip was very worthwhile. I managed some research on recent British music, caught up with family (in particular, my rapidly growing seven nieces and nephews), hung out with some friends, read some books, and bought loads of music from my favourite record stores.
But as the days have passed, its become clear that the bombings were the first suicide missions in the UK and done by homegrown Brits of Pakistani origin from West Yorkshire in the north of England. As a Pakistani Brit who grew up a few miles away from the city of Leeds, where two of the bombers lived, I felt somehow implicated and paranoid, despite this being an ‘irrational’ feeling. Many years ago I went to the University of Leeds for two years before aborting the BSc. Chemistry programme, so I have a passing familiarity with the neighbourhoods that have now nurtured a death mission and held its explosives in their cupboards and closets. Even since I’ve gotten back to Auckland this week, I sometimes think, ‘are people looking at me differently?’ It’s completely daft, but I can’t help it. It’s not a good time to be a British Muslim really, so I’m probably ‘safe’ in dear old distant New Zealand, even with the likes of Winston Peters and his xenophobia. Anyway, check out my review of the film Yasmin (set in the Muslim north of England) in the blog from a couple of months ago to get some insights into the local context for Islamo-fervour.
Anyway, the post-London factors have contributed to a troubled mindset so I was going to play some music on The Basement that captured this mood and commented elliptically on the zeitgeist post ‘7/7’ as the new media hype puts it. But fortunately I changed my mind at the last minute and decided to play an upbeat set to cheer myself up. Thanks to Nick for the support with his sounds. In fact, he played a set of moody jazz grooves to compensate! And thanks to the person who txted with ‘Kia Kaha’. Sorry I forgot to thank you on air.
I hope the London events slip into more reasonable perspective soon. The terror attacks are terrible and qualitatively new in some ways. Therefore Muslims AND non-Muslims in the UK (and elsewhere) for that matter need to solve some problems in their communities and deal with Islamist fascism, without a mad assault on civil liberties in the name of the War on Terror. Of course, Tony Blair is going to use this as an excuse to ramp up anti-terror legislation, the introduction of ID cards, and to create more rhetoric to justify the occupation of Iraq. He and others are also making it seem as if all of Britain’s Muslim communities should somehow sort this out, which is like the Israeli administration telling the Palestinian Authority to stamp down on the ‘rogue elements’ that are active as Hamas as if ‘The Palestinians’ are responsible rather than Hamas itself for suicide bombers and missiles. As if all Muslims are responsible for London’s bombs! But I don’t see why Britain’s Muslim communities are supposed to be hanging their heads in shame because of the action of a handful of terrorist bombers. Did all white Britons feel guilty when one of their own bombed Londoners a few years ago in the name of white power? People also get whipped up about suicide bombing in particular, when the fact of a bomb that kills people should be the main issue. It doesn’t make it any better or worse because the bomber did him- or herself in at the same time. But so many folks have a desire to demonise the bomber and the cause as completely alien, so the suicide quotient helps them do that. That stops one having to try to understand the reasons (however misguided, stupid or loathsome) why someone did something so awful. The news coverage (including TV3 with lame London correspondent Rachel Smalley) has tended to hype July 7th like something totally new and dreadful. But Londoners haven’t forgotten the dread of IRA bombing campaigns that occupied the city in the last few decades. And a friend of mine in San Diego pointed out that more than 60 people die almost every day in shootings and bombings in Karachi and other Pakistani cities, so we need to put London into relief. This event occurred only a week or so after all those rich Live8ing celebrities kept reminding us with their clicks and counts how many Africans died in the few minutes they were up on stage in front of the global TV audience. But the typically amnesiac mainstream media seems to have forgotten (in a matter of days!) that lives outside the so-called ‘West’ in, say, Gaza, Falluja, and Kabul have as much value as lives in New York, London, and Madrid.
‘Back to life, back to reality’. To relativity and levity!