ON the morning of July 7, 2005, journalist Peter Zimonjic and his wife Donna set off from their West London flat to catch a train into the city.
It was a seemingly ordinary day, much like any other – but it would turn out to change Peter’s life for ever.
Peter Zimonjic says the 7/7 bombings have taught him to feel in his bones how our time on Earth is fleeting[/caption]
Commuter Alexander Chadwick took this picture of passengers being evacuated from the bombed Piccadilly Line train in a tunnel near Kings Cross station[/caption]
For he was about to witness the worst terror incident since the 1988 Lockerbie disaster – and the first suicide bombings that the UK had ever seen.
That morning, just before 9am, three al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists detonated devices on Tube trains in central London.
An hour later, a fourth device was set off on a No30 bus near Euston station.
The 7/7 bombings killed 52 people and injured over 770.
Peter and Donna had caught a train at their local station in Hanwell, near Ealing.
But when they had to change trains, Donna chose to take a different route from Peter’s, as she was heavily pregnant and thought she would be unlikely to find a seat on the busy Circle Line.
So Peter got on without her – and was caught up in one of the deadly explosions that has haunted him ever since.
Tomorrow there will be a service of commemoration at St Paul’s Cathedral for those who were killed or injured on the city’s transport network.
But for Peter, 52, it will be too heartbreaking to return.
Here, he explains why.
MY wife, Donna, was eight months pregnant with our first child on the morning of July 7, 2005.
She had slept poorly, which meant so did I.
At Paddington I kissed her goodbye, watched her train disappear into the tunnel, and marched to the Circle Line.
I stood in the crowded carriage as the train accelerated towards Edgware Road.
Around the same time a bomber got on at that station.
As his train passed mine in the tunnel, he detonated his bomb.
There was a sudden loud smashing noise which reminded me of the metal on metal of one car hitting another in a high-speed accident.
I thought two trains had clipped one another as they passed in the tunnel.
The thought of it being a bomb was an alien one.
When the emergency lighting returned in the carriage, smoke was beginning to sting our senses.
‘Clothes shredded’
A family nearby comforted their terrified children.
A man to my left grasped at the sealed doors to escape. Panic spread.
From the carriage behind, a person asked for help.
When a man in front of me moved towards the calling voice, I followed.
The coach on the parallel track lay in darkness, but through the sliding doors we could see a leg and an arm wiggling into our train.
The limbs belonged to a man trying to force his way through a hopelessly narrow crack in the doors — his clothes shredded, his skin dripping with blood, his face frantic.
First responder Paul Dadge helps injured passenger Davinia Turrell at Edgware Road tube station[/caption]
The bombed Edgware Road Circle Line train where six victims died[/caption]
The man I’d followed into that carriage, who I would later learn was named Tim Coulson, worked with me in a vain attempt to release the door.
We smashed the window and jumped across the track into the darkened carriage of the neighbouring train.
I climbed through the window frame and slid on a floor that was slick with blood.
Bodies, some moving, some frozen, lay strewn about the dim carriage.
Screams echoed through the tunnel, all pleading for help.
Some were close, some seemed very far away.
All were filled with a deep terror.
It was a sound I’d not heard before or since.
Stepping back and looking down the carriage, I could see a man in a suit trying to revive a woman lying prone on the carriage floor, her clothes almost blown off, with chest compressions.
The outcome of that effort had been decided long before he got there.
My heart raced, my breathing shortened, my head swelled — I didn’t know what to do next.
I was experiencing every human emotion at once — I was overwhelmed, incapable, impaired.
I felt a hand on my leg, and when I looked down I saw a man lying on his back.
He pointed below his waist where I could see he only had one leg.
The stump that remained had been tied off with the remnants of a white collared shirt.
I took off my suit jacket, folded it and put it under his head.
I took off my shirt and ripped it into bandages, strengthening the tourniquet.
For more than an hour I lurched through the carriage looking for people I could help, feeling that whatever I did was not enough.
When we finally walked through the tunnel into daylight, I phoned Donna.
I did not know if she was the victim of another bomb on another train.
For 20 years I’ve lived my life trying to only think of the terror of that day on its anniversary
Peter Zimonjic
When I heard her voice I broke down for the first time.
She had thought it was some kind of fault or disruption.
When I told her it was a terror attack, she kicked into survival mode and helped me get home.
I wrote an account of my experiences that ran in the Sunday papers immediately following the attacks.
A man named Andrew Ferguson who recognised my description of him, of his efforts to help save people that day, reached out to me and we went for a pint.
It was like meeting a lost brother.
Help people connect
For the Tube staff and the emergency service workers, the bombings happened at their place of business, alongside colleagues.
But the passengers were all strangers, alien to one another.
I set out to fix that and created londonrecovers.com to help people connect and fill in the blanks of the day.
Many became the subject of my book: Into The Darkness: An Account Of 7/7, a retelling of the day we were trapped in the hellish scenes together.
When I moved back to Canada two years later, Tim and his wife Judy came to stay with us and over the years we kept in touch.
When I flew back for the tenth anniversary of the attack, they sat right behind us in St Paul’s Cathedral. We embraced and smiled, so happy to see one another alive and well again.
Peter’s friend Tim Coulson, who died last year[/caption]
For 20 years I’ve lived my life trying to only think of the terror of that day on its anniversary.
The grandest resistance to that horror and death, I have always felt, is to live and to find joy, to love my wife and daughter Anja, now 20, born two weeks after the bombs, and my son Jakob, now 18.
As this anniversary approached, I decided not to come back to London to mark the occasion.
I wanted to, but I couldn’t.
Earlier this year the world lost Tim.
I wouldn’t be able to sit in St Paul’s and feel that empty space behind me.
The July 7 bombings taught me life is fleeting — which is one thing to know and another to really feel in your bones.
Marked by the horror of the day, I was fortunate not to have faced the terrible injuries some survivors have had to bear, or the unfathomable loss of loved ones that others still live without.
Most fortunate was that I was able to walk out of that tunnel and into the arms of my wife, that I was able to witness the birth of my children, that I was able to grasp the sunlight and pull myself out of that tunnel to live and love and survive.
I GOT ABUSE DUE TO MY MUSLIM FAITH
WHEN the first Tube bomber set off his device on the eastbound Circle Line train between Liverpool Street and Aldgate, Muslim passenger Mustafa Kurtuldu was sitting in the next carriage.
After the blast he had an agonising 45-minute wait for emergency services to lead him to safety – and then went on to receive abuse because of his religion.
Mustafa, now a designer, said: “My bag was searched after we were rescued from the Tube, and when I was outside it was searched again after an officer asked my name.
“I sat next to a Spanish guy while I was being transported to hospital on a bus, but I felt as though he was treated differently to me and was given more sympathy. I was only 24 years old and had the burden of being an ‘unelected official’ for the Muslim community.
“I had the anxiety of explaining that I wasn’t the ‘bad guy’.
“In the weeks following the bombings I was attacked at knifepoint, and was made to condemn the attacks as a Muslim.
“If someone is a victim of any other kind of crime, they wouldn’t be asked to condemn it.
“It’s so irrational. You are held to a higher level of accountability.
“It still happens. I was on a flight back from Canada and was pulled to the side with other Asian men.
“When the flight attendant saw I was in business class, she apologised, so I asked if terrorists don’t travel business class. It’s ridiculous.”
And 20 years on, Mustafa is still suffering.
He added: “I used to go to the memorial in Hyde Park and break down.
“I had such survivor’s guilt. It has seriously affected me.
“Over time, you learn to pretend that it doesn’t impact you. I tried to talk to others about it but people don’t understand.”
