Yesterday, on the 22nd of March, Belgium was rocked by a series of bombings in public places, more specifically, Brussels Airport in Zaventem and the Maalbeek metro station near the European district. At this point, 32 people have been confirmed to have died, either at the bombings or having succumbed to their injuries in the hospital. Many are still fighting for their lives and many more have been maimed for life through the nail bombs used in the departure lobby of the airport.
Sounds familiar? These type of attacks have been happening all over the world for a while now, just last week four people died in a suicide attack in the heart of Istanbul and a week before that 34 people let their life in the bombing of a transportation hub in Ankara. That same day, there was a shooting in an Ivory Coast hotel that left 18 dead.
But what makes Brussels different? In Dutch we have a somewhat insensitive saying that can be literally translated into “the-far-from-my-bed-show” which means exactly what it says: it’s something happening somewhere far away. However, yesterday, it wasn’t happening somewhere far away: I work for Levi Strauss Europe, whose offices are located in one of the business campuses around Brussels Airport, so like hundreds of others, I take the train to the airport and catch a transit bus to the campus, which is only a couple of minutes away. I’m in Brussels Airport just about every single day, I’ve had countless of coffees in the Starbucks in the departures lounge with friends or colleagues because I missed one of my train connections and had some time to kill. I would have been at the airport at the time of the bombs going off, like I would’ve been any other day, but because some weird twist of fate, I wasn’t; I had booked a tattoo appointment that day and had just woken up and gotten out of bed when I saw the breaking news notifications on my phone that there had been two explosions in the airport. I jumped in the shower and when I got out I saw I had several missed calls from my manager and a confirmation that these explosions had been bomb explosions - there had been an attack.
Suddenly, the scenes of carnage wasn’t from some far away country, it was happening at home. Another phone call from my manager, who had forgotten I had a day off and let out a relieved sigh: “Thanks God you’re ok, I thought you were in the airport”. He told that me that two of our colleagues were having a coffee at the Starbucks when the bombs went off, but were miraculously unharmed and now stuck in one of the airport hotels that was in lock down. I rushed downstairs and turned on the TV to follow the live news feed: footage from people rushing out of a smoking airport - my airport.
Belgium is a small country everyone knows someone who lives or works in Brussels, so this has affected just about everyone in Belgium in some way, but I want to thank everyone who has shown their support and solidarity for Brussels - I can confirm that it’s truly heart warming to see the overwhelmingly positive global response to these kind of tragedies.
Tomorrow, I’m getting the planned tattoo with one small addition: 22/03.
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
