29/06/08
Prejudice vs Manners vs Apathy vs Sense -
Categories: The 23:15 train from Waterloo to Guildford was rammed full tonight. I was journeying back from a typical Saturday night London double-up - Covent Garden and Chalk Farm, since you ask - and with an early start tomorrow I ran back to get the earliest train I could. There was one seat left on the train when I boarded, and even then there were loads of people standing. No one was taking this seat. Then I saw why.
Sat next to the empty seat was a Muslim man, about my age, with a rucksack, and reading the Qur'an. I'm happy to say I didn't hesitate for a moment before sitting. Not like the prejudiced people standing. "I won't sit next to that terroristy fella, not me. I'll stand here, four feet away - that'll protect from any potential blast." Perhaps it's more that they want to be four feet away from the social embarrassment of stopping a man detonating a bomb. I dunno. For whatever reason, no one wanted to sit next to this guy. I, as I say, didn't pause for a second. Such a moral philandering love-all-the-people social example am I. Or it could be cos there was an old lady coming up behind me, and I knew that if I hesitated, she'd be the one who gets to sit down all journey. No, ma'am - you pester the woman in that seat with orange sticker for her seat. I don't care if she is pregnant.
So I sat next to this avid Qur'an-reader for the 40min journey home. I got some work out, but if I'm honest, I couldn't concentrate on it, cos part of me is thinking, "What if he is a terrorist? I mean he probably isn't. But surely he has all the signs. He keeps fiddling with his rucksack. He's listening to an mp3 player (could be last-minute instrutctions of what buttons to press, I dunno, on a podcast or something). He even had a phone where you have to enter a password to activate it. The clues are there. Most telling of all, he had chosen to read his Qur'an on one of the busiest trains I've ever been on, on a Saturday night at kicking-out time, when every one of the 5 carriages was rammed full of what I like to call 'drunken morons'. It was one of those train journeys where I look around and think, "Yeah, I wouldn't say no to nuking this lot myself."
That train did really contain everything bad about the west. There was gluttony in terms of severe drunkenness; greed in terms of people showing off new phones, trainers, jewellery; pride in terms of some girls over-revelling in their own beauty; lust in terms of so so many lecherous men touching up inebriated women they've just met... Most of the seven deadly sins were represented on tonight's 23:15 service. If my next-door neighbour had reached into his rucksack and pushed a big red button, I could hardly have blamed him.
Despite all of the above, and the prejudices I had (be honest: if you're judging me now, what would you have thought if you'd been sat next to this guy? Particularly when every few minutes he's nervously reach into his big for something I could never see?), I quickly decided he was not a terrorist. Any smart warmonger would realise that this train contained few people that mattered. In many cases they'd be putting them out of their misery. This guy, I had decided, was just a studious religious man, taking solace in his holy book on a Saturday evening's journey home from London.
I glanced over at one point when he brought out another book - a pamphlet translating some bits of the Qur'an into English, and explaining a few points. He noticed my glance, and I sensed a bit of prejudice from his side too now, back at me. Did he think that me glancing over his shoulder was me assuming he was one of Alan Qaeida's cohorts? Cos that's not the case. By now I'd decided he was a good 'un. I was looking at his book now cos I'm interested in theology. Who's the prejudiced one now?
Alright, probably still me. Ultimately when he got off the train, he was nice and polite when I moved for him. I was proved right. He was a good egg. The other passengers still cast judging looks towards him, and were clearly glad he was gone (well the old lady was - it meant she could finally get a seat). Was I right to have terroristish concerns? Especially when the guard ('guard'? he's a ticket collector. He didn't guard anything. He was in the carriage at the rear of the train - he told us so himself. Coward.) told us on the tannoy that we should keep an eye out for anything suspicious. So surely a bit of prejudice is allowable, if he ticks every box in the I-Spy Book of People Who Are Against George Bush. I dunno. Maybe I thought he was a terrorist, but was just lazy enough to want a seat and British enough to not cause a fuss by raising any kind of alarm. Either way, he was not a terrorist. At least not tonight. Although for all I know he's gone away now to hatch some plan to detonate next Saturday's 23:15 from Waterloo to Guildford, tipped over the edge just cos some weird ginger guy kept looking over at him trying to read his book...
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