A quick detail re: sacred calendars & terror
[ by Charles Cameron — timing ]
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I just received my own copy of Anuraga Kashyap‘s Black Friday, his terrific film about the 1993 Mumbai bombings which I’ve previously compared with Gillo Pontecorvo‘s Battle of Algiers, and was struck by the “date” detail in the screencaps above — compare the McVeigh OKC bombing on the anniversary of the Waco conflagration, and the Consulate events in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11.
Sacred calendars and sacred time: I was talking about them in a happier context in my post for Maundy Thursday, so the topic was on my mind, and I thought I should check out the journalistic account on which Kashyap’s movie is based — Hussain S. Zaidi‘s Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts. And yes indeed, that’s Kashyap’s source, followed nearly word for word in this particular scene.
Zaidi has Tiger Memon say:
Friday, 12 March, is the seventeenth day of Ramazan. It will be the day when the Holy Prophet fought the first battle of Junge-Badr against the heathens of Mecca and forced them to retreat. The auspicious date will help us achieve success.
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There are two sorts of calendar running simultaneously, two times: sacred and secular. Both kinds of calendar are important…
