What Lies Beneath

T he summer began with fireworks celebrating national birthdays in Canada and the United States, Sir Bob Geldof ‘s Live 8 concerts on behalf of Africa, a surprising Olympic bid victory for England, and then, during the G8 Summit in Scotland, terrorist bombs blasting holes into the heart of London. Once again, the “world of disorder” launched co-ordinated, sophisticated, and fatal attacks on the rule of law, internationalism, and the “world of order.” Mayhem, death, impotence.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted, “We will not be terrorized,” and the leaders of the world’s richest nations expressed their solidarity. World markets showed remarkable resiliency. Nonetheless, Londoners were asked to imagine and prepare for a clear and present danger, just as they had done during the Second World War Blitz. After an atrocity like the subway bombings of July 7, there is little choice but to grasp at history for a frame of reference.

By the third aerial attack on their city in the fall of 1940, Londoners knew that a blitz was upon them, and that it would be upon them again and again. Over 500 people were killed in the first assault, and the enemy, relentless in its pursuit of destruction, rained bombs on the city for fifty-seven consecutive nights. Though the Germans were often invisible in the darkness and above the clouds, Londoners still knew the attacker to be a hostile state with deadly imperial aspirations. Nazis—whether clad in sinister grey suits around the war table or as young soldiers marching triumphantly down beleaguered city streets, or encased in Stuka jets dropping bombs—were identifiable and brutally realistic. If their supply lines could be blocked, their hope of success would be minimized. To a large extent, the Nazis remained proud and above ground, and this hubris made intelligence-gathering feasible and resistance possible.

In the London of July 7, 2005, watching the all-too-familiar images of crowds swelling and citizens praying that the victims pulled from the wreckage were not family or friends, one could almost hear the moan: where did this come from? Apart from the mangled remains of a double-decker bus, the scenes of this crime against humanity were not to be found. The other three bombs exploded underground, and the impact was heard and felt, but not seen. As such, the apt historical reference is less the blitz of 1940 and more the “little blitz” of 1944, when pilotless V1 German bombers and silent V2 rockets descended upon London. The Nazis had adapted and, for London at least, terror by stealth became their operating principle.

And so it is today with al Qaeda and its secretive Hydra-like branch plants around the world. As the G8 leaders gathered to address international problems, from the proud institution of London’s tube came a reminder: you cannot prepare for our wrath, and being on constant alert is impossible for those whose quality of life includes an afternoon beer and conversations about matters prosaic. If the world of order was meeting in Scotland to sow the seeds of internationalism, to reach accords on climate change, foreign aid, and poverty reduction, the world of disorder was attempting to drive the wedges of isolationism into the hearts of all good people.

The fights in Afghanistan and Iraq and the rounding-up of terrorist cells in Spain and Britain might be claimed as victories, as chipping away at the armour of hate. Reassurance that the war on terror is being won is necessary, but this hate has no armour. It is amorphous and asymmetric, with new strands forming—some at home and some abroad—as existing ones are extinguished, and it is committed to remaining unknowable and to periodic ambushes from the shadows of fear. If the attacks of September 11, 2001, were meant to announce arrival, the ones since have slid into the depths and are now buried deep in our collective consciousness. This is terror.

The Globe and Mail was right to publish novelist Ian McEwan’s description of the scene in London on its front page of the July 8, 2005 edition. The words of pundits and politicians now read like reductivist anthropological tropes—Islamic radicalism, free societies will remain free—almost as tiring as the war on terrorism itself. A novelist’s job is to describe and offer insight, and the measured McEwan wrote that “once we have counted up our dead, and the numbness turns to anger and grief, we will see that our lives here will be difficult.” There is every chance, however, that the anger and grief will be momentary, and that the numbness will return and prevail. On September 12, 2001, in the Guardian, McEwan wrote, “Always, it seemed, it was what we could not see that was so frightening.” Even more so today, it is what we cannot see that is so frightening, and perhaps this is why the London bombs went off in the subterranean depths.