Death Toll
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2020
Summary
We can start with how Giles Hart a Telecom worker was
a militant for equality who died at Tavistock Square – for
reasons that his leader, one Tony Blair did not explain
but equally a man for whom his bombers didn't care. The
shrapnel took cashiers and engineers – it took Sahara Islam,
a Bangladeshi maid just 20; Shyanuja Parathasangary 20 plus
of the Royal Mail office; Gladys Wundowa from Ghana who
had to wipe the University College's engineering rooms quite
clean; or a Sam Ly, whose IT job was pukka new or Anthony
Fatayi-Williams whose work on offshore was quite old; or
Phillip Russell 28, from west London who was late for work
at JP Morgan; and Anat Rosenberg, 29, a charity worker from
Israel; And William Wise? And city worker Jamie Gordon at
30 or Mr Colin Morley 52, from Finchley in north London?
Or it can be done sequentially:
Susan Levy, 53, was the first, Ojara Ikeagwu,
from Luton, social worker, 55, was close behind.
How do we write in a way that creates an
onomastics to approximate the incendiary,
the horror of blasts, bombs and mayhem?
What is the closest to the aftermath of a word-bomb
or what Breytenbach once named as a pomegranade?
Bring in the forensic linguists to decipher this –
in London, in Gaza, in Karachi, in Mumbai.
To die gold dye and tattoo a Polish Stan at 27 Baisden the
Afghani; whether who worked young man on his way or a
language student Sharifi in the tube like Phil and what of a
highway from Turkey between King's Cross with a lip stud to
conference like Lee or Attique and Russell square, like Ciaran
at 24 at Aldgate; a Baptist deacon or visitor or an accountant
like James Brandt mortgages and Chung Beer Gamze into
Adams from Mauritius like Brewster engineer Yuen Gunoral
or even another such a young accountant, or a colourful
young hairdresser, manning shops Cassidy like Ania.
Or worse because each onomastic referent has
become shard and mixed with another:
To die gold dye and tattoo a Polish Spaeno at 27 Thner the
Afghani;
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Around the World in Eighty DaysThe India Section, pp. 89 - 91Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2014