I work at one of the London hospitals which dealt with the injured from the July 7th bombings in 2005. It's not a day that any Londoner will ever forget. At our hospital non-urgent outpatient clinics were cancelled so that the nursing and medical staff could instead go and help out in A&E, theatres, and wards with room for the expected influx. People like me were used as runners, going from ward to pharmacy, from A&E to labs delivering forms, messages and in some cases anxious relatives as the portering service was stretched to the max moving patients and equipment from one place to another.
Then at about 3.30 an email from the chief executive told us non-essentials to start making our way home. In the final paragraph the CE issued some special instructions. As reprisal attacks had already begun, Asian staff members were advised to wear their hospital ID, complete with NHS lanyards, displayed prominently.
In the days and weeks that followed almost every one of my non-Caucasian friends had something to tell about their commutes to and from work. Mostly it was that no-one would sit next to us, regardless of how full the bus or tube carriage was. Often people would be quite obviously keeping an eye out, anxiously starting at any sudden movements and shifting away pointedly from shopping bags. For a long while none of my friends would listen to their MP3 players or use their mobiles on public transport. It was summer so outer clothing was minimal but lots of people wondered what would happen if this atmosphere of mistrust continued into the winter.
What brought those days so clearly to mind was an incident on the way home this evening. A friend of mine had sent me a small parcel to work. It has "fragile" written on all sides and so I was carrying it carefully in my hands and not casually tucked under my arm when I got on the bus. And I noticed that the driver eyed my parcel, as did 2 other people I walked past on my way to the top deck. The woman I sat down next to flinched away from me, eyes darting first nervously to my face and then dropping down to the parcel. She relaxed marginally as she read the hospital address written clearly on the top, but she took the first opportunity she had to move to a seat several rows behind for the rest of the journey.
It all just brought it home to me that I will probably now be forever guilty of travelling while Asian.
