Recently I attended an event at Westminster, a trip that naturally involved tube travel. Though my visit to London was on a day that did not involve shootings or bungled bombing attempts, the atmosphere of disquiet on the tube was tangible. Tangible, but not quite visible. People still stood there staring into space, at their shoes, or with their heads buried in a newspaper. A few pretended to sleep. I sat opposite a young Muslim man who, like most travellers, had some baggage with him. Was it purely my imagination or did people deliberately edge away from him? Why did passengers joining the train choose to cram themselves in a huddle together rather than taking the two or three seats available at either side of him? Perhaps they were just hopping on and hopping off, and sitting down would have been more trouble than it was worth.
Or perhaps not. A friendly word, a "hello" even, would have doubtless produced a response and probably a smile. The anxious-looking young man rummaged in his bag and pulled out a laptop computer. He produced it, perhaps, as a token of his innocence, a symbolic way of saying: "I'm okay, and so are you." I felt sad for him. The recent events are bad enough for anyone to take in, but to be young, Asian and treated as a potential threat must be unbearable. And it occurred to me that there was something about this tube journey that mirrored the bigger picture - that if we could only communicate better, we might not be in this situation at all.
