Two weeks later...

I cannot believe it is exactly two weeks since the last entry. Two weeks since plinthing and the aftermath and everything that entails.

Outside, the Edgware Road has been subdued by the quietest hush. When I look out of the window, I see six sets of blue lights circling and the scene gradually emerges - two ambulances, three police cars and a fire engine. Then I see the firemen gathered around what is left of a car, working frantically. The police hold back the crowds, the traffic is redirected, hence the hush. Lights are brought onto the scene and still the firemen work, even more frenetically. I am drawn magnetically to the window and watch mesmerised from my 6th floor viewpoint at the unfolding.
I can't see any details, just the vagueries of what is happening. But perhaps after 20 minutes, the frantic motions stop. The firemen still work away, but the scene changes. My breath mists the window as I figure out what is going on. Whomever was in the car must have died.

The franticness ends. What point being frantic once the spirit has departed? I spend a moment thinking about that person, thinking about all those who worked with them in their last moments. How fragile we are. How slender is the line that keeps us on this earth.

Somehow it commits me more to do what I can, however I can. In this small moment of quietness and stillness on the Edgware Road, with the crowds gathered to witness. I remember road traffic accidents in Cambodia and how no-one would stop - people would just pass by. If a victim did not have money to get to hospital, then why would anyone care? It reminds me of what I'm grateful for, for being here, in my home land, my home town.

It reminds me that this path of FGM is a difficult one too. The other day, Estelle and I talked of child marriage. It seems hard, perhaps even specious to link the two, so perhaps, actually I won't.

Instead, I will go to bed and hope for a dreamful night. I wanted to say something about losing loved ones and how that feels. Because somehow in this moment of losing that person, whomever it was, it feels so very real. That for whatever reason we love, we always have to let go, hard as it is.

This is not quite the FGM blog that I thought it was going to be, so I had better close. And live to fight another day.....