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7.28.05

Pond Scum: Disorientalism

By Steve Finbow

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Elmore Leonard’s rule number one in his ten rules for being a good writer is: “Never open a book with weather.” So, I didn't.  Moving on: It was a hot, cloudless and humid day, 27 degrees centigrade, with a light south-easterly wind. Thursday, July 21st, 2005. Suddenly, all hell broke loose – (rule number six). Seriously, the news first came in through Reuters that four more bombs had exploded on London’s public transport system. We have to thank Tezcatlipoca that the bombs did not maim and kill. I tried to text Lola to tell her I was OK. The mobile/cellphone system was down. I used Yahoo to send a text message. I M OK. Later that day, I received a message back; it read: UR more than OK. The bombs turned out to be damp squibs (not squids, that would have been surreal). The terrorists fled. The one true tragedy occurred the following day when armed police shot dead a young Brazilian man – Jean Charles de Menezes. Why he was running from the police, why he ran into a Tube station, why he jumped/fell into a Tube train is open to question.

 

Art By Nicholas Allanach

Unconfirmed reports say that his grandparents were Irish. My first thought was the police who shot him were American – that sort of thing happens in LA or New York, not in south London. (I wrote this Monday morning. Monday afternoon I read in the newspaper that the man was fleeing because his visa had run out. Now, I know Tony Blair’s government is cracking down on immigration but eight bullets in the head is a tad harsh.)

I rode the Tube on Sunday, the first time for ages. I walk everywhere. I rode for three stops and realized I was watching everyone (not in the usual hunt for attractive women or to see how many books are not by JK Rowling or Dan Brown) but in a suspicious way. And everyone was watching me; but, then, I always look suspicious – maybe it’s the keffiyeh and Leonard Cohen T-shirt that gets me pegged as a suicide bomber. Tube travellers are neurotic enough. Advice given to us since 07/07/05: Look out for people who sweat. We were all sweating. Everyone sweats on the Tube. Look out for unattended bags. Since the first attacks, rucksacks have become a combination of Little Boy and Fat Man. Talking to a regular I know in my local pub about the attacks, he said we should look out for “Pakistanis with rucksacks.” He elaborated by saying, “Particularly swarthy Pakistanis.” It is nice to see the English language used as an admixture of racism, ignorance, and tautology. It just goes to prove that “since the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” – Edward Said.

The fear in Britain is that since the terrorists are home-grown, the bombings may trigger civil disorder, which at present is inchoate and nascent but may well foment into a larger war. There has been an increase in racial and religious revenge attacks recently. Finger-pointers have targeted madrasas in Pakistan as crucibles of terrorism. Young Pakistani Muslims go to madrasas to learn about their faith and culture. According to the digit-jutters of doom, these religious schools are “hotbeds for terrorists.” I thought that was what Iraqis slept on in Abu Ghraib. Madrasas, apparently, are where young Muslims learn to hate. John Major, a former prime minister, argues Britain should deport these people because they “dislike the Anglo-Saxon way of life.” Er… Deport to where? They are British. And we live a multicultural way of life, not Anglo-Saxon.

Meanwhile, terrorists murdered at least 64 people in the Sharm el-Sheikh explosions. Suicide bomb attacks claim scores of Iraqi lives every day. Through my open windows, I can hear the “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” of sirens. I always think you get used to a city when you no longer notice the sirens. Now, every time I hear one, I turn on the news to see if there has been another attack. Is fear the goal? Am I scared? No.

Let us go back to Elmore Leonard. I agree with his weather remark. And it is true if you live where I live – London. I mean, what would be the point? If I had looked out of the window when I started writing, I’d have said it was overcast with a chance of rain. Looking out of the window now it is sunny with a mild breeze. By the time you read this, it could be a nuclear winter or a globally warmed perpetual summer. But, hold on, you will be looking out of your window or your hole in the wall or your gap in the tent, so God knows what the weather would be like. Anyway, when I woke up and looked out the window, the horizon was the pink of pencil rubbers and grey – the grey of wet newspapers. And the sun was up there too, somewhere, inevitably. And that is it. We just go about our life – fear and terror are part of it.

At what point do human beings lose their morality? At what point does the moral question of the worth of another person’s life become nullified in the face of one’s own continued existence? Is fundamental ideology, in whatever form, amoral? Suicide bombers kill hundreds of people in England, Egypt, and Iraq. In England, we respond by introducing armed police and a shoot-to-kill policy resulting in the death of an innocent man. How does that assuage our fear and terror? I have just read Fergal Keane’s Season of Blood and Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, two books documenting the horrors of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. That’s terror, man. That’s fear, bro. Both books reminded me of a quote by a Japanese mountaineer attempting to summit Everest in Jon Krakauer’s amazing Into Thin Air. The climber is explaining why he and his fellow Japanese climbers did not offer water, aid, or assistance to stricken climbers they passed on their way to the top of the world. He says, “We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality.” Say what? But I get it. To offer help, to have a collective morality, would mean putting yourself in danger. I hope we do not make sections of our collective community into scapegoats. Don’t make it into “us” and “them”. Let us hope we can afford morality – whatever the cost.

Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.

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Steve Finbow writes out of London, England. He has worked for the poet Allen Ginsberg, the writer Victor Bockris, and the artist Richard Long. His fiction, essays, and short plays appear, or will appear, in Eyeshot, 3am Magazine, Yankee Pot Roast, uber, Locus Novus, InkPot, Dicey Brown, The Guardian Online, and Pindeldyboz. He is currently working on a novel (Yeah, right).  He can be contacted here.

© 2005 Me Three