July 05
Shuffling home on Friday evening, I stopped and stared at the poster stuck front of the Underground turnstiles.
The poster, nearly life size, showed four men in the midst of trying to detonate bombs in the center of London and appeared shortly after Thursday’s failed bombing. Each in mid-action (one running, one looking over his shoulder, one waiting impatiently for the train, the last looking at the camera – all while carrying large backpacks) – I might’ve guessed it was some sort of raw, subversive ad for the next season of Big Brother. You know, multi-cultural Big Brother, and instead of coked-up Chelsea tramps and a few stroppy chavs from Birmingham, it could be a diplomatic season, where they give heed to all races and religions, and Big Brother gives them large philosophical conundrums to ponder …
Sadly, even Big Brother is taking this thing seriously.
The photos, themselves, were badly focused and highly pixelised, making the identities even more muddled and the breadth of people that fit their descriptions huge.
What struck me, as I stood in the quiet of the post-rush-hour station, however, is that the men in the photos were nothing like I had pictured. I’m not sure why, but somehow I imagined middle-aged men in sandals, long dress and perhaps a skull-cap. If nothing else, I expected a well-managed beard, if not a bit too long.
These men, however, were Western-dressed. These men were…well, they were stylish. They were young, without beards. They wore nice jeans and smart boots. One of them even wore a well-fitting sweatshirt with ‘New York’ emblazoned on the front – if that wasn’t barfingly ironic enough for everyone. More than anything, however, is that they were trim and well-groomed.
These are men who tried very hard to look the way they did, and it is a trait that is difficult not to notice.
After the first bombing, when traumatized Londoners got back on the bus and tube, everyone did their quiet bit of sizing each other up. If a traditionally dressed Arab-looking man got in the carriage, everyone took a collective but noticeable step back. This sometimes happened for women in headscarves and men wearing turbans. If he or she sat down in a seat, people silently decided to stand, or at least move their paper in between. While I tried my best to shrug off the racial profiling, I found it impossible not to wonder: is this person shoved in between the door-frame and my elbow carrying a bomb? And subsequently: if it goes off, how likely am I to be blown to bits?
The poster’s display of the undeniable style of these men (who are now all in police custody, I will note), made me realize that we have been going about our daily journey in the wrong way.
If religious extremists who want to blow people up also care about matching their TopMan jeans with non-scuffed Carhart boots; if they shave their beards into chin-straps and curve their baseball caps just so, then instead of staring wide-eyed at the Indian man carrying his groceries home, maybe we should give the bombers over to the torment of the Vogue editorial staff and a couple reality make-over television shows.
Sneering at a badly-paired sweater and trouser combo, reminding them that hooded sweat-shirts are, uh, so over, and launching into a heavy coughing fit because of their cologne would provide both a torture device for the police and a screening mechanism for tube passengers. I say: shame style, and you’ll defeat the repressed fashionista.
Sure, we might offend a few metrosexuals with low self-esteem - we might even find it difficult to poke holes in their fashion argument - but considering how hard these men obviously worked to look the way they did when they tried to blow themselves up, I think it’s London’s best hope at the war on terror.
So tomorrow’s tube journey provides me with a new way to evaluate my safety, and you can bet that I won’t be sitting next to a clean pair of Carharts.
Posted by: Aaron Retka in Uncategorized | Permalink
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