On Saturday evening, a terrorist attack struck the heart of London, killing seven people and leaving dozens injured. After reports came in that a van had crashed into pedestrians outside a pub at London Bridge, it soon transpired that the attackers had gone on a rampage through nearby Borough Market, running into pubs and restaurants and stabbing people at random. In all, the attack lasted a short, horrific, eight minutes before police shot the three assailants dead.
As a Londoner living in New York, I watched the events unfold with horror on my phone, as flurries of texts from friends and family back home continued to light up the screen. Yet perhaps what felt so striking about the events of Saturday night, was not just that the attack occurred in the center of London, but that it happened in places that lie at the center of the city’s soul. In fact, Borough Market's existence is the fruits of the multiculturalism that makes London the great city that it is: During the day, you’ll find vendors selling bottles of olive oil from Greece next to freshly baked Balkan pastries, and stands dishing out paper plates heaped with Egyptian street food. On any given Saturday morning, hoards of Londoners and tourists are picking up sizzling sausage sandwiches to cure their hangovers and stocking up on fine, gooey French cheeses to take home for later. Though the market would have closed for the day by Saturday evening, the area would have remained abuzz, with everyone from boozing twenty-somethings to families out for a meal.
London’s markets are an integral part of the city and always have been. Borough has been operating as a market in some form for a 1,000 years; Broadway Market in the East End has been trading since the 1890s (it’s still home to a generations old cafe that serves, among other things, jellied eels); and Portobello Market, where I grew up, has also been knocking around since the 19th century. To begin to understand the city, you need to experience these precious sites of cultural exchange—though to witness the hollering of the stallholders at 9am on a Sunday is a reason to go in itself. When first-time visitors ask me what to do in London, I always tell them to get up early and head to Borough Market.
As the 8.7 million people who make up London can attest, it’s a surreal thing to witness the horror of Saturday night take place in places you know all too well. Footage filmed on a cell phone shows police storming into Katzenjammers, a German beer hall, and yelling at drinkers to get down “on the floor” as the knifemen caused chaos. I have a lovely memory of being there a few summers ago, on a warm evening not unlike Saturday’s, while a vast brass band blasted away and people drank from absurdly large steins.
Equally surreal, then, was watching the President of the United States subsequently unleash a Twitter storm capitalizing on another country’s tragedy to further his own agenda. Yet it’s been gloriously reassuring to see how Londoners are responding in contrast to news commentary this side of the pond. While the New York Times described Britain as “a nation still reeling” following the Manchester attacks two weeks ago, Brits reacted in a predictably dry fashion: The hashtag “Not Reeling” was promptly born, used to tweet accounts of ordinary Sunday morning trips to Ikea, and bike rides through the city as another day rolled along. The image being hailed as a symbol of the city’s resilience and hope? A man still carrying his full pint glass as he fled the attack. This attitude is not to belittle the horror of Saturday—or what recently happened in Manchester and outside Parliament, either—but a small dose of sarcasm is how us Brits choose to cope in a time of crisis.
It's often said that London is comprised of lots of villages, each neighborhood brimming with its own sense of character and community. The streets, bars, restaurants and pubs targeted on Saturday night are the very places that hold these villages together—and are what draw people from all around the world to this beautiful, old city. I have no doubt they will continue to do so.