Riding the number 30 bus to Marxism today, the route attacked yesterday, I started to catch a tiny glimpse of the terror in terrorism. I got on and went upstairs to sit down as usual, but upstairs was empty. Usually the front seats are occupied with kids or tourists enjoying the ride.
As we came into Kings Cross and a jam of red buses trying to get past scores of TV crews and journalists from all over the world, kitted out with lights and umbrellas, I noticed there were only a few people on the top decks of all the buses. We glanced at each other with blank faces and watched the movements of our fellow passengers as they came up the stairs.
As we moved on to Euston and the entrance to Tavistock Place there were more TV crews and white plastic sheets covering the view of the destroyed number 30, where a bomb had detonated in the back seats of the top deck and dried human flesh and blood was still smeared over the walls of the British Medical Association.
Two passengers of the number 30 had died in the BMA's courtyard yesterday morning. My mother called me while I was on the bus to once again check I was OK. I didn't tell her which bus route I was on.
Two weeks before, in my beginner's English language class for refugees, a middle aged Iraqi women answered her mobile phone. She lives in
bed-and-breakfast near Kings Cross. Her husband is dead, killed by Saddam, and her 5 children live in Baghdad. She lives in London alone.
For the last 2 years she has been trying to get permission from the Home Office for her children to join her in London, so far unsuccessfully. When she finished speaking she returned to the class in tears. It was her daughter telling her a bomb had gone off that morning in the market in Baghdad - 30 dead so far. She was distraught.
Today the first 10-15 pages of newspaper are devoted to the bombings. The bombs in Baghdad are so frequent they get a few paragraphs in the middle unless western soldiers or contractors are involved.
The papers are full of eyewitness accounts: dozens of near miss testimonies "lucky I had 2 coffees instead of my usual l"; minute-byminute accounts from survivors; the tragedy of the dead and their loved ones; the flowers and the memorials; the stoic Londoners getting on with business. We will be watching and reading all about it for weeks, in London and around the world thanks to all these TV cameras filming the tube station entrances and the white plastic sheets.
But, as George Galloway about the dead in Baghdad and Fallujah? In Mosul, Basra and Tikrit? In Afghanistan? In the refugee camps of the Gaza strip and 'the West Bank?
When the bombs fall from 10 kilometres in the air, so high you can't even hear the planes, and kill thousands, or they rip through busy streets and market places in Baghdad, we don't hear their stories of near escapes, chance decisions, minute-by-minute accounts, the tragedy and sorrow of their families or see the blurry images from their mobile phones.
In Baghdad, do they stare out the window of the bus wondering if or when another explosion will bring death to the city? Do they keep away from that street or market stall for a few days? Or lie in bed desperately trying to hear the virtually imperceptible rumble of a B-52 miles above? Do the authorities erect white plastic sheets to hide the body parts?
When we bomb them do they have hundreds of ambulances, fire engines and police bringing out the wounded and rushing them to hospital all within 20 minutes? Or do they just bleed to death on the pavement? When we bomb them does it matter if they die?
After all, we are right and they are wrong. Our bombers have expensive planes and millions of dollars of training, nice uniforms and the advice of expensive lawyers and, of course, orders from ethical democratic governments that only reluctantly order them to kill if the cause is just, all options have been tried and there is no other way. They don't sneak around with backpacks on buses and trains.
So now, to paraphrase the Queen Mother, we Londoners
look the people of Baghdad in the eye. But is it really the same?