Page 26 The th OSCAR - OUR 36 YEAR JUL/AUG 2008
The th JUL/AUG 2008 OSCAR - OUR 36 YEAR Page 27 by Peter Zimonjic Into The Darkness: An Account of 7/7 Published by Vintage [Random House] For those of us who know it well <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Ottawa</strong> <strong>South</strong> is a sort of sanctuary. The trees fill the streets and back yards in the summer, blanket the ground with colour in the fall and stand as lonely sentinels in the winter. Our sidewalks are alive with the sound of children and cluttered with their toys and bikes when they’re suddenly called in for dinner. It is a green and warm place. In one way or another I have considered <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Ottawa</strong> <strong>South</strong> my home for 11 years, despite being born in Toronto. I lived here while I studied philosophy at Carleton, worked here while a reporter at the <strong>Ottawa</strong> Citizen and I dreamed of returning here during the five years I lived in London, England. <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Ottawa</strong> <strong>South</strong> for me has always been a safe place and I guess that’s why I’ve chosen to come back here after living through the most destructive terrorist attack in British history. I wanted to be back home, Into The Darkness: An Account of 7/7 safe, if such a thing is possible. It was the summer of 2005 and I was on London’s subway system on my way to work for a British newspaper called The Sunday Telegraph. I boarded the train at Paddington station and moments later sailed into the darkness of a tunnel as the train carriages rattled over the rails. Another train approached us from the opposite direction and just as it began to pass there was a loud crack and a bright flash. The train opposite us had been bombed. I didn’t know it yet but six people would die and dozens more would be seriously injured. Answering a call for help I walked into the carriage behind and found a man covered in blood trying to force his way on board our train. He had been in the bombed carriage, which now lay opposite to where I stood, and he had been seriously injured. Unable to open the doors to our train to let him in, I, and a few other passengers, took the decision to smash the window on our train and jump over, into the darkness, of the bombed carriage of the neighbouring train to see if we could help. Taking this decision we had no idea we were about to enter the epicenter of a terrorist attack. Despite the obvious signs, we didn’t stop to consider the simple and obvious reality that this had been an attack. The idea, however logical, seemed crazy. Bombs go off in Iraq, in Afghanistan in Israel, not near me. When we successfully negotiated the broken window and lowered ourselves in to the bombed carriage of the train on the parallel track we found ourselves surrounded by death, injury and fear. It took over an hour for fire and ambulance services to reach us and it was during that hour we performed first aid, comforted the injured, tried to wake the dead and watched as the innocent failed to hold on until help could arrive. When help finally came I rushed out of the dark, leaving the people I had been treating to the capable hands of the paramedics. I raced to find my wife who was eight months pregnant and in her arms I was once again safe. The following day I put my account of the attack on paper for The Sunday Telegraph and people started to call me. They wanted to know if I had any contact information for those they had helped, or who had helped them. It was then I realized how isolating it was being a stranger on a train and so I started up a web site to help survivors network with one another and share experiences of the day. That web site turned into more questions people wanted answered and so I decided to write a book. Into The Darkness: An Account of 7/7 is, essentially, a non-fiction novel which chronicles the hour from the time the first bombs went off to the time the fourth took the lives of 13 people on a London bus bringing the total death count to 52, plus the four bombers. To research the book I tracked down people from all four incidents, some were very close to the bomb, others far away. I talked to the families of those who survived and those who, sadly, did not. My intention was to create a book that read like a thriller but served the historical purpose of preserving how people rose to the occasion to help Correction: June 2008, page 27 Author of The Amazing Adventures of Rosy, The Fairy, is Mary Hawkins. Mary Hawkins will be at Mother Tongue Books on June 28, from 2 to 4 pm. Author Peter Zimonjic others, maintained calm and extended warmth. I wanted people to know that despite the acts of terrible cruelty by some, the whole was strong with honour and kindness. My book hit bookstores in Canada in May and has already been short listed for two awards in England. The Good Housekeeping award for nonfiction and the Gold Dagger Award for Non-Fiction. It now sits proudly on my shelf, a memory contained in pages, a long way from London. I sometimes flip through it as I watch my children play in the green and lush back yard so typical of <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Ottawa</strong> <strong>South</strong>. I see them and I think how nice it is for them to be here, in <strong>Ottawa</strong>, close to the canal, Brewers Park and the children on their street. It is good to be home, for them and for me. Peter Zimonjic works as a parliamentary reporter for Sun Media. peterzimonjic@yahoo.com
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