London Seared by Memory and Loss

John Falding finds comfort in talking, even though the memories haunt him: the phone call from his girlfriend, Anat Rosenberg, to say she was on a bus to work. Then screams, then silence.

Amrit Walia wanted to “go out guns blazing” to retaliate for the death of his 26-year-old schoolmate, Anthony Fatayi-Williams. Calmer now, he is thinking about ways of reaching out to angry young Muslims before they strap on explosives.

A month has passed since four apparent suicide attackers blew themselves up on three London subway lines and a double-decker bus, killing 52 passengers; those left behind are struggling to come to grips with loss and loneliness.

The dead and those who mourn them are a multi-ethnic, multifaith profile of London. Rosenberg was an Israeli Jew; Falding is English and not Jewish. Fatayi-Williams, born in Nigeria, was a Roman Catholic with a Muslim father; Walia is a Sikh.

Shahara Islam, British-born of Bangladeshi descent, was a bank cashier who attended Friday prayers at her mosque and liked to shop at trendy clothing stores. There was Behnaz Mozakka, a woman from Iran; and Karolina Gluck, a woman from Poland; and Giles Hart, a 55-year-old Englishman honored posthumously by Poland for his support for the anti-Communist Solidarity movement.

Most of those killed July 7 were on their usual commutes, aboard bus No. 30 or deep inside the Tube -- the vast subway system where Britons sheltered from Hitler’s blitz in World War II.

There were stories of cruel happenstance, such as the woman who called a relative to say she had emerged safely from the Tube, only to catch the doomed bus. Her route to death was much the same as Rosenberg’s.

“It is just so mindless, the whole thing so pointless,” said Falding, 62.

He was sitting alone in his central London apartment, surrounded by traces of his girlfriend -- photos of her posing in a roaring-’20s glamour outfit, dents from her stiletto heels in the wooden floor.

“The terrible irony,” said Falding, “is that it happened here” -- in peaceful London, not in her native Israel, where the fear of suicide bombings shaped her cautionary mindset.

Rosenberg, 39, had moved to London 18 years ago to pursue her dreams of a dancing career. But she never lost her Israeli antennae. Falding remembered her scolding people who left bags unattended in bars, and she would get nervous before a trip to Israel.

She was to have traveled there in September for her father’s 70th birthday. Falding intends to make the journey in her place.

For some relatives, the agony was compounded by having to wait a week or more for confirmation as investigators picked through the carnage deep underground and in the bus’ mangled hull.

Walia, 26, at first was hopeful because a missed call from Fatayi-Williams showed up on his cellphone timed at 9:57 a.m. -- after the bombing. Then he found out the phone’s clock was 20 minutes fast.

When the worst was confirmed, he said, “I beat the wall, threw up, cried.”

He said his dead friend was “everything to me” -- a large, muscular man who looked after the circle of friends, “as odd as this sounds, like a woman in a way. He was the one that cared about us, that believed in us all and kept us boys together.”

“We were so angry, when a guy, a young bloke dies, we just go out guns blazing and we were all saying, ‘Let’s do something. Let’s fight back,’ ” he said.

Now he’s thinking of setting up a foundation to send the message that violence isn’t the answer.

“These terrorists are our age, we listen to the same music, we can see what they are about even if we don’t understand it,” said Walia. He is 26. The bombers were three Britons of Pakistani descent and a Jamaican, ages 18 to 30.

For the world, Anthony’s mother became the face of grief-stricken London as she appeared on TV, awaiting confirmation of her son’s death.

“Which cause has been served?” Marie Fatayi-Williams asked. “Certainly not the cause of God, not the cause of Allah. ... Anyone who has been misled, or is being misled to believe, that by killing innocent people he or she is serving God should think again, because it’s not true. Terrorism is not the way.”

“Why? I need to know, Anthony needs to know,” she said.

Volunteers at a victims’ support hotline say calls have trickled in, but there have been no requests for a more structured victims’ group. “People so far seem to be dealing with the tragedy in their own ways,” said volunteer Sara Grymes.

Many families have released brief statements through police asking the media to leave them alone. They include the family of 28-year-old victim Helen Jones, which has had past experience of terrorism. They are from Lockerbie, Scotland, where bombed Pan Am Flight 103 crashed in 1988, killing 270 people on board and on the ground.

Falding, a retired Financial Times journalist, said talking about Rosenberg had helped, even in the horrible hours after the attacks when he clung to the hope that she was alive.

She had left for her job at a children’s charity and called him from the bus to tell him about mysterious problems on the Tube. She suggested he mention it in his local newsletter. “As soon as she said ‘newsletter,’ I heard ghastly screams in the background and the phone went dead,” said Falding. All attempts to phone back went straight to voicemail.

Then it was a matter of waiting to find out whether his girlfriend was alive or dead. “As I talked about her, even then, I know my tenses were going back and forth,” said Falding.

He remembers how she could disrupt his evening plans with a sudden call to say she was dropping by. “Now, I would give anything for a call like that.”

The day after the attacks was Falding’s birthday. He went to a restaurant where he’d guessed she was planning a celebratory dinner. Sure enough, “there was her name -- reservations for 9 p.m.”

He canceled.