London: Complete story and notes

I just completed “London”, a story about the London bombings of 2005 which I witnessed and thought it could be interesting to also capture my original notes about the story in this post. I am including the story itself as a succession of pages on the left of this column -click on any image to zoom in.

The story itself was originally entitled “My War Record” and was to be part of a much larger story about my encounters with terrorism (I have had six in total so far, which is a strange statistic -and that one in London wasn’t the most dramatic or the closest one either). I still want to complete the series and hopefully will get to it.

To write “London” I had to read about the events of that day in press archives and on the web – four years after the event I remembered very little of it, and my most vivid memories were of streets filled with people and empty of vehicles, and of my dash to the airport while trying to get through on my phone to make sure everyone I knew in London was OK.

I walked the exact route I had taken that morning to create a photo archive. Very little had changed except the cafe were I was seated when the bomb took off. I re-created as best as I could.

The one thing I found difficult when doing the research was to look at the pictures of the suicide bombers. I wanted originally to draw their faces as series of close-ups building up to the end and the explosion but in the end I just couldn’t do it. I ended up using a backpack to create some of that tension. The end panel was to feature Khan’s statement -the one he read on video and that ended up being broadcasted on Al Jazeera. That too I couldn’t print.

Here are a few of my notes as I was writing the story on a plane to London:

- I think the weather was fair

- Confusion, people misled, electric surge

- People coming out like a tide rising

- Having coffee + croissant, seated facing the window and watching people in the street; I noticed them noticing

- Suddenly the cars are gone, taxis are gone; police stop all traffic in ever larger circles

- Sixth sense, noticing something is badly wrong and instinct to leave no matter the cost

- Walking with luggage to find a cab.Thought about taking train (!) but people said the electric surge disabled “all trains”. Couldn’t find a cab, walking and walking. Got lucky at a barricade and got a cab that the police had just stopped.

- Going around all the barricades, through London and out. The airport (Stamsted) is calm, no security, like nothing happened. Getting on plane was super easy.

- British attitude, exceptional, courage and incredible calm. Probably no different during WWII when the V1s started hitting

- Today, the muslim stores are even more numerous on Praed St. Women in Burka. The bombers failed.

- Show what they looked like.

-Why did they do it. They had kids, family. Statements.

- Explosives in backpacks, ordinary materials, home made.

- No smoke, no noise, no detonation. Silent film. Just people filling then streets and then overwhelming them, but going to work, or trying to make it back home. No a single sign of panic.

- Most expensive cab ride to date

Four years later, drawing the story of that day, what strikes me the most is that I decided to leave London at any cost that morning -it wasn’t a very thoughtful decision; I just knew I had to go. Once that instinct kicked in, nothing could have stopped me -it wasn’t easy getting that cab. I am not proud of that instinct because it really felt like I was leaving people in a tough spot behind me, but there was no questioning it that day. I am also surprised by how quickly I put the whole thing behind me -a few hours after I landed in France it was as if it all had been a dream- until I suddenly got the urge to write about it in 2009.