Time To Remember

HOW do you start talking about July 7 2005?

Do you do as the Independent does and remember the victims, recalling seven stories from that terrible day one year ago?

Or do you do as the Telegraph does and begin your focus with a look at the bombers, taking a look at a new video of Shehzad Tanweer, 22, the schoolboy cricketer from Yorkshire who killed himself and seven other people?

Perhaps best to share the focus, victim and killer forever remembered as two parts of the same story?

The Times splits its page in two. On one side is Khan. The image is taken from a propaganda video released by al-Qaeda to mark a year since his death.

Khan is heard to say that the attack is “only the beginning”. His will not be a life given up in a perverted act of random murder. His life will form part of bigger attack. He will be a hero.

On the other side of the page is a familiar image of Shahara Islam. She was aged just 20 when Hasib Hussain, 18, detonated his bomb on a bus as it travelled through Tavistock Square. He killed 14 in all.

“She loved London. She loved Britain…Shahara loved her religion,” says the caption beneath Shahara’s photograph. The words are from her father, Shamsul.

And at once the choice is obvious – this is the day to remember the victims.

And so it is that at noon today the nation will stop for two minutes. Silence has got longer – we only used to get a minute for the entire First World War.

But the London bombings are not something that will be marked on a grand scale every year. The wounds are still fresh. The Times says police are stepping up security in London and on the national rail network for fear of an anniversary attack. Two minutes seems a small moment in time.

Later in the day, the Telegraph says that the names of all 52 victims will be read out at an open-air commemoration in London’s Regent’s Park.

It will be a powerful moment.

We will remember them collectively. But their loved ones will never forget the person so cruelly taken from them.

Posted: 7th, July 2006 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink