My connection with Manchester happened purely by accident.
I initially started out my undergraduate degree in London. But after a family crisis sent my family and I into a domestic violence refuge, push came to shove and we were eventually forced to relocate to my mother’s home town of Bradford. My university degree, something I had spent so long planning towards, almost went down in flames because no university would take a last-minute transfer. But the University of Manchester tossed me a life-line when I needed it most.
At first, Manchester and I didn’t start out on the best of terms. I almost had a dramatic meltdown on my first day of university after I got lost and couldn’t find my way to Manchester Victoria train station. But for the following three years that I was there, it became a home away from home. It was a smaller version of London with the hustle and bustle of a concrete jungle, and Mancunians imbued with that generous northern spirit we southerners sometimes lack (and envy) at the helm of the city.
On the one hand, I’m grieving for Manchester, a city where I’ve embarrassingly danced the night away, escaped the demands of adult life for a few hours in concerts at Manchester Arena and other venues, just as the victims did last night. I’m grieving for the families who won’t hold their loved ones again, for the people being treated in hospital, and for those who will carry the memories of what happened last night for the rest of their lives. I’m grieving over the fact that as unfathomable as it might be, there are people in this world who can somehow justify detonating a bomb of shrapnel and nails in a crowd of concert-goers who never expected they wouldn’t return home.
On the other, I’m worried sick about the retaliation that some communities will face off the back of this attack. I’m worried someone will scream at visibly Muslim women as they walk down the street, that they need to go back to “f*cking ISIS” because of the cloth on their head as I’ve experienced before. I’m worried about the brown or black kids, the Muslim kids going to school who will mark this day as their premature coming of age because their classmates thought they were related to the big bad terrorist, just because of their name or the amount of melanin in their skin. I’m worried that the kind of corrosive words spouted by the likes of Katie Hopkins will become more palatable to fellow Brits, tired of the fact she hides behind the Union Jack as if she has more claim to this country than I do because whiteness is a barometer for Britishness. I’m worried that despite feeling in absolute turmoil, despite feeling an unbounded rage at what has happened, I’ll have to paint a smile on my face when I see people glance at me uncomfortably, just to show that underneath the folds of cloth on my head, I am not a threat. I feel exhausted, and I know the sickness I’ve been feeling all day today isn’t just anemia dragging me down. It’s a weight that has been dragging down everyone across the country today.
How can we possibly understand the logic of someone who justifies killing innocent people, no less children? There is no making sense of thoughts and ideologies woven out of chaos, no matter how much politicians, pundits and the like theorise and pontificate. The least we can do, whatever our faith, whatever our alliances, is to channel our grief and rage into something good, something useful. The worst thing we could do now is to turn on each other.
I hate that it takes for events like these to mobilise people into action when we’re collectively reeling from the heavy blow of what happened last night. Our country is already hurtling down a rabbit hole of political and social chaos as it is. But if we aren’t calm and measured in our responses, if we don’t show love and solidarity to those who have suffered directly or indirectly and to those who will need it in the coming weeks, then the impact of yesterday’s attacks will be generational.
On my way home from a vigil for Manchester at Bradford Cathedral earlier, I walked past a gravestone specialist shop in Manningham. “IN LOVING MEMORY”, the sign read in rusted gold capital letters. It made me wonder, when we die, what impact, what legacy will we leave? Big or small, we all have a part to play in shaping this world of ours. Whether we choose to use our hands or our words as a hammer for good or bad, is entirely up to us.
Watching the candles burn in the cathedral, and whispering hurried prayers in the darkness of my room, something Dylan Thomas wrote popped into my mind:
‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’
From the doctors, the taxi drivers, the police, fire and ambulance workers, the hotel and restaurant owners, the homeless man who held a dying woman in his arms, the concerned people who opened the doors to their homes, to the Mancunians who ousted the EDL from the streets of Manchester, each and everyone of these people have shown that as hard as it is to focus on the positives tonight, there is hope. There is unity and resilience. There are forces of good at work. Don’t you dare forget that.
—Aina Khan
Photo Credit
