James Smythe - The Testimony

I’ll take the job, I said. Of course I’ll take the job.

Dominick Volker, drug dealer, Johannesburg

Ag, that fucking place was a nightmare. I was out working, trying to collect from some of my dealers. I would sell to students, and they would sell it on for me, but I needed people to work the rough districts. I mean, nobody was going to fuck with me, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to be there. And then, just as I was getting nervous, the second Broadcast happened, and I thought, for a second, it was speaking to me, you get me? Do Not Be Afraid , like a heads-up that I would be alright.

Phil Gossard, sales executive, London

It happened again when we were back in the office. Three days after it first came into our lives, and we had stuff to catch up on; or, more realistically, prepare for, because the US branch wouldn’t open again for days, so we had to cover them. Jess’ school was still closed, though we still weren’t sure why. Karen had joked that the nuns were planning terrorist counter-attacks. They’re too busy building false habits from Semtex, she said. We weren’t even close to being as locked down as the US, though. Everything there that couldn’t be vigilantly defended, it seemed, was just closed, hang the consequences. There was something different about their government’s reaction, though, to whenever this happened before. I remember when I was a teenager, when 9/11 happened, and they were so aggressive, so bull-headed. And that’s not a criticism; it’s what they needed. Here, they just seemed resigned, like they were almost disappointed that it was so small, that there wasn’t more in the way of noise and fury. There were no planes crashing into buildings; this was grass-roots stuff at its finest.

The sandwich man came, because these things repeat themselves, foreshadow themselves, the universe giving you constant hints of what’s to come if you know what to look for; I had a ploughman’s. I was sitting down about to eat – it was only just gone eleven, but I hadn’t eaten any breakfast because of having to sort out sending Jess to a friend’s house – and then it – He, It – spoke again through the static. It felt like a goodbye, to me. Most people didn’t agree, but I thought that it definitely felt like a goodbye, or the first stages of one. It felt like one of those conversations you have with a girlfriend, when they sit you down and say that you need to talk. It felt like that, and everybody knows what that actually means, when you have that conversation.

Some of the other people in the office started crying. I didn’t understand that; I didn’t feel that way at all. Same with watching the people in the other offices. I went to the window just like we did that first time, watched them running down the street towards the tube station or the car park, frantic, like there was some real sense of urgency. What do we have to be afraid of? I asked, out loud, to nobody in particular. Some of the people in the street looked up at me, then their faces changed, whatever-they-were to scared, terrified. What’s wrong? I asked. He’s going to fall! one of them said, and for a second I thought that it was something prophetic and knowing; but they weren’t talking about me. They were talking about the roof, above my head, where Bill was; and they watched as he stepped off, plummeted past the window. I had been leaning out, to get a better look – because I didn’t know it was Bill before he did it – and I didn’t have time to get out of the way completely. He clipped my hand as he went, thudding onto a car below. Its alarm didn’t go off; he just smacked the roof, sank into it face down, arms outstretched, as if it were his bed. Some people ran over but it was already obvious that he was dead. The rest of the office cleared out, some quietly, some in tears, and they left me there on my own to shut down their systems for them, log them all out. When it was all done I sat in the office and finished the sandwich, because I was so hungry, and I rubbed at my hand where it had collided with Bill. It was bruising, dark purple and blue and angry.

Dhruv Rawat, doctor, Bankipore

I was lying in bed, because I had the day off. It was my day off the rota, and I had nothing to do, so I lay there and thought about the talk I had with Adele – which felt more like a fight, like an argument between friends than a conversation, and I was angry with myself for speaking the way that I did, for not vocalizing my thoughts better – when the second Broadcast happened, and we were told to not be afraid . I didn’t react, because I wasn’t afraid in the first place. I lay there and thought about how the rest of the world would take this; and then the telephone at the side of my bed rang. I picked it up, and the receptionist told me to wait, that I had a call from another room. Adele, I said when the line clicked, are you alright? She sounded terrified. He says, Don’t be afraid (and she was already paraphrasing it, making it sound less than it did), but of course that’ll make us scared, of course it will. She spoke so fast, I could barely make out the words. I mean, what are we meant to do with that? I asked her her room number and she said, No, tell me yours, I’ll come to your room. Mine’s a state. Two minutes later I heard her tapping on the door, and I answered it. I had pulled a shirt on as well as the pyjama trousers I sleep in and had not yet changed out of; she was in the same clothes that she had worn the day before, as if she hadn’t even been to bed. I had tried to make my bed, but failed; I was terrible at those practical things. She didn’t even seem to notice.

I’ve called my parents, she said, and my sister; they’re fine, but they say it’s mayhem back at home. (She was from Manchester, in England.) I wish that I could go back, to be with them; or bring them out here, show them how calm it is. She laughed, I remember her laughing – a lot – during that conversation. I mean, you’re barely reacting, she said, you’re all acting like, I don’t know, like this is just a fly buzzing around, and it’s there and you can’t ignore it, but it’s not worth getting stressed about. I didn’t say anything. But it is worth getting stressed about, even if you don’t believe that it’s God, because there’s something that we all heard, Dhruv, and we all heard it at the same time. Isn’t that news? Isn’t that important? Yes, of course it is, I said, for sure it is. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. I should go, she said, I need to get some sleep. I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow; I’ll have to talk to the producers back in the UK, see if we’re putting a hold on filming. She stood by the door, hand on the handle, ready to leave. I should call them, I suppose. Sure, I said, perhaps you could do some filming here for them, you know, about The Broadcast . That made her laugh, and I asked why, what was funny about it. The news is full of people running around and bombs, and you think they want footage of you people standing around, trying to get on camera and not really having opinions on this stuff? Come on, Dhruv. She was crying; she let herself out.

Hameed Yusuf Ahmed, imam, Leeds

One man from the community was having doubts. Actually, no, they were all having doubts, it seemed, but this one man was almost vigilant about them, expressing himself in ways that went against almost everything we taught about how God should be treated. I have always wondered if our God is the only God, he said to me, which was an admission that I had never heard before. He said, I have always thought, what if we’re wrong? I recognized him, but again, I didn’t know his name, and he didn’t introduce himself; he assumed that I knew already. Talking to him then, I realized that I didn’t know everything. I was never that big-headed, to think that I did; but even locally, my community, those people who I should have been guiding, they were having doubts. The people coming into my office before him had all told me similar things, or expressed them; they were worried about what The Broadcast meant, and they might not have said it in those words, but they wanted to know what happened if it was a God. He is Allah, the one, I told them, from scripture; He knows your heart. They wanted validation; they doubted everything. This is what happens when your leaders don’t have absolute conviction; when faith isn’t enough. Many of them suggested that it could have been Allah speaking to us; I listened but didn’t speak, because that went against all I had taught them. If it was, they said, why would He have spoken in English? Surely He would use Arabic, or maybe a language even older?