Hell Is Round the Corner — Little India, Singapore | 11 September 2001
9/11 What the hell just happened?
“Selamat menjamu selera,” the pretty waitress says as she puts a steaming plate of nasi goreng belacan in front of me. The dish looks amazing; I will enjoy this. It’s just a simple concoction of fried rice with chopped chillies, onions and some long beans, but what gives the dish its character are the tiny anchovies and a generous serving of sambal balacan, a spicy savoury condiment freshly made from chilli peppers, fermented shrimp paste and limau kasturi, a kind of lime juice. Yes, I will enjoy this. The smell of the fermented shrimps is a bit of a challenge, but otherwise, the dish looks mouth-watering.
Yet, I also feel somewhat guilty, here I am, ready to dig into a plate of delicious Malay food, sitting in a tiny restaurant on Singapore’s Syed Alwi Rd… in the middle of Little India.
Little India, Singapore’s busy neighbourhood of fragrant smells and technicolour temples. I probably should try some Indian food, but not today. I’ve only just arrived from Indonesia and I’m not that well-versed in Indian cuisine. Only a couple of months ago I had my first ever Indian meal in Kenya and I wasn’t that impressed.
The restaurant has got a comfortable no-nonsense working class feel, the table is a bit ramshackle, the chair is plastic, there are fluorescent lights on the ceiling and behind me, there’s a TV blaring the news. But it’s fine, after a whole day wandering around this Lion City, it’s the perfect place for a late dinner. I take a sip from my ice cold Tiger beer, ready to dig in.
As I’m half way through my meal, suddenly something on the TV behind me demands attention, “Oh, this is a very sad day for the United States,” a voice says, “another airliner has gone down…”
As I turn around to the TV, the picture changes to New York’s World Trade Center towers, on fire! CNN’s headline: Two Planes Crash Into Towers of World Trade Center. What the hell has happened?
Watching the screen as if in a trance, the planes flying into the towers over and over again, the sounds around me seem to mute. A song comes to my mind, a song which has always scared me. I’m not religious, so it’s not the title of Tricky’s Hell is Round the Corner that frightens me, it’s the extreme sinister darkness of the song; the background moaning never fails to send ice cold shivers down my spine.
The nineties are finally over is all I can think. The 1990s, my sixties, have now come to an end. Like the long 19th century which finally ended with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, a decade of fun and hope just died in New York, 11 September 2001.
It feels like it was just yesterday that the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War was over, bringing the hope for a better world. I remember how, during my army Basic Training in the early nineties, our instructor had told us that we didn’t have an enemy anymore. “But don’t worry,” he’d said, “We’ll find you a new one.”
Of course, the feeling of hope had been just that; hope. Less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first Gulf War took place and another year later all hell broke loose in Yugoslavia. But that was different. The Gulf War had just been a blitz and the wars in the former Yugoslavia, were civil wars; it was different.
“Terrorists!” the TV screen screams. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they want? There are too many questions. How can you possibly fight an unknown enemy?
A lot of people are standing around me now, staring at the TV, talking to each other. Conversations are going on in what must be at least a dozen languages, but the common denominator is New York. The whole world must be talking about this now, the whole world united in a moment of darkness.
I can’t help but feel that very dark times are coming. The West has finally found a new enemy. Hell is round the corner, it’s a good thing I left the army. But I’m still an active reservist for another 16 years…
Tricky. Hell Is Round the Corner on Maxinquaye [CD]. London, United Kingdom: Island Records (1995)
This autobiographical sketch comes from my bundle In the Moment: A Disjointed Audiobiography which is available at Amazon.com. (USD 9.50 for a paperback or USD 4.50 for the Kindle version)
