On the one year anniversary of the bombings in London, a look at the aftermath and where things stand from several people, in openDemocracy. Huda Jawad, London resident:
When my sister and mother accompanied me to St Mary’s Hospital in west London to hand over our bouquet of flowers and offer our sympathies to the victims of the 7 July 2005 bombings, and then moved on to light candles at Edgware Road tube station, a flurry of cameras clicked and flashed. At the time, I assumed that complete strangers armed with cameras were interested in our small acts of solidarity and defiance only because of the “unusual sight” of hijab–wearing Muslim women standing against violence. Would they be as interested, I recall thinking, if we weren’t headscarfed and olive–skinned?
In the days that followed, the routinely friendly attitudes towards me of my colleagues and fellow passengers on London transport helped my paranoia and sense of siege slowly to dissipate. This experience made me even more determined to stand up to the claims and acts of the people who perpetrated these attacks in the name of my beautiful and spiritual faith. Refusing to be a victim was an active choice that I made then and continue to make every day since.
Now, a year on, a different predicament has emerged.