"All I want to do is steal". Joel has just had his first taste of looting, and he can't get enough. Karim, on the other hand can only watch and attempt to understand the reasons, as the boroughs of London descend into flames. This is a story about different people from different walks of life. A story about theft, fires and looting. A story about disaffected youth, mindless thuggery and criminality. This is the story of the London Riots of 2011 and the judicial retribution that follows.
An excerpt from the book:
As he walked towards me he took a hefty swig from the bottle of Wray and I could only hope that he would not be driving tonight. He nodded to me as he approached and out of courtesy I nodded back. “Bruv, where did you get the alcohol from?” someone asked from behind me; they seemed not only to know each other, but to also recognise each other from amongst all the masked people in the crowd. “It was inside the jewellery shop fam,” he spoke with a slur, which I attributed to the alcohol. “For real? Shit, you man should’ve showed me,” he raised his arm to reveal a cut on the underside of his forearm. It was surrounded by dried blood. “Oi we need to go burn one store back there, I cut my hand. Can’t have forensics tracing me and shit.” He looked at me for the first time. There was some hostility in his gaze; he probably wondered why I wasn’t masked; I had long since allowed my t-shirt to fall back onto my chest, or why I didn’t seem to be participating in the law breaking. The guy with the alcohol spoke before he did. “You want some drink fam?” he asked me as he offered me the bottle. “I’m cool you know,” I declined, “I’m driving.” He burst out laughing. “Fam, show me the store,” he asked of his partner in crime and the two of them walked away. I turned to see my brother and his friend approaching. “You know them man?” my brother asked. “Nah, not even.” “They’re trying to break into the post office,” my brother’s friend pointed out plainly. We turned to watch. It didn’t take them long and in they poured. It seemed as if the more stores that were broken into, the more confident the looters became. They were now acting with impunity. Give a man an inch, and he will take a mile, as the adage goes. The police should have stopped this ages ago but they didn’t and now it was only going to get worse. As soon as they had poured into the post office it seemed as if they had poured out. People were standing around us bearing the loot they had just stolen; I noticed a pair of girls, each of them carrying their own bouquet of flowers. I didn’t know which scenario was worse; that they looted those flowers for themselves or that guys looted the flowers for them. One of the girls placed the flowers down atop a boxed Blu-Ray player. Nothing shocked me anymore. |