London will bounce back; it always does
Jim Read, Jakarta
If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England (The Soldier, Rupert Brooke, 1914)
We've seen it all before: The streets cordoned off with police tape, empty save for the wreckage of vehicles, smashed shop windows and a huddle of emergency service officials wearing fluorescent yellow jackets.
Prime Minister Tony Blair appears on television, ashen-faced, to condemn the appalling savagery that has just been visited upon his country. The national flag is flown at half-mast from numerous buildings, including the official residence of the head of state.
This time, though, the locations involved were more than place names to me: Liverpool Street, Russell Square and Edgware Road are all places that I as a Londoner, born and bred, have visited frequently on an everyday basis.
Although Rupert Brookes' poetry was written during a different era (the lead-up to the First World War), with a few adjustments, the sentiments still ring true today.
This time, it wasn't Baghdad or Jerusalem that were being torn apart. It was London; not just any city -- MY city -- that had become the target of a terrorist attack.
The bombings were all the more poignant, as the UK was still on a high after hearing that London had been selected to host the 2012 Olympic games. Indeed, London Mayor Ken Livingstone was still in Singapore, where the Olympics decision had just been made, when the bombings occurred.
He lost no time in pointing out in TV interviews that it was neither the powerful nor influential (gathered for the G-8 summit at Gleneagles hotel, Scotland) who were being targeted, but ordinary, innocent people -- the likes of you and me -- whose lives were being irrevocably altered by the atrocity.
As a Londoner who has lived, on and off, in Indonesia since 1989, I appreciated how Jakartans or those who live in Bali must have felt upon hearing news of the London bombings.
I was in Jakarta at the time of the Bali bombings in 2002, and preparing to leave for work in the capital at the very moment that an explosion occurred just outside the Australian Embassy last year.
The carnage and devastation that occurred in Indonesia -- shocking though it was -- took place in a country where I was living and working as an expatriate, so inevitably -- despite my horror at what had happened -- I somehow felt one stage removed from it all.
When the same thing takes place in one's own backyard, it hits home hard. Ironically, I was here in Jakarta when news of the London bombings came through, but being half a world away seemed to make it even harder to bear.
I returned to London for a short holiday in late April during the run-up to the British general election -- when the security authorities were frantic that a Madrid-style bombing might be perpetrated in an attempt to influence the election outcome, as it had done in Spain.
Although staying in the outskirts of the capital, I made many trips to the city center, which is the heart of the nation's arts and entertainment scene. I was more than a little apprehensive on each occasion, fearing that a terrorist attack could occur, but what is one to do?
To stay at home is not really an option -- life is there to be lived, and is all too short, anyway, to worry about the theoretical possibility of being involved in a terrorist attack.
The London that I visited was what TV news programs have provided a glimpse of just recently: A bustling, cosmopolitan place, where people from every race, religion and walk of life mingle while getting on with their lives and going about their business -- all within an unspoken, yet treasured, acknowledgement of the sheer joie de vivre that can be experienced in a world city.
The postbombing reaction of Londoners has frequently been described as one of resilience and stoicism -- precisely the qualities demonstrated by the city's wartime population during the Blitz in 1940.
Former New York mayor Rudi Guliani, who was in office at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, was, by coincidence, in London when the recent bombings took place. He emphasized that pre- and post- Sept. 11 emergency planning in his city was modeled closely on how the civilian population behaved in the British capital during the Second World War.
The clearing up goes on, the painstaking gathering of forensic evidence continues, the tube (subway) service slowly returns to normal. The hordes of tourists from all over the world, who usually frequent the capital at this time of year, will eventually be seen again on the streets.
Londoners will not allow the bombings to change their way of life, for that would be giving in to terrorism, and they have far too much to do, anyway, simply getting on with their everyday lives.
For me, as a Londoner living abroad, Brookes' words encapsulate the feelings one has, at distance, for one's hometown:
And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
The author is a staff writer for The Jakarta Post.