London bombings: I survived 7/7, but still see the suicide bomber everywhere

Tony Woolliscroft

Dan was taken to St Mary’s Paddington, and then to The Royal London Hospital, where he underwent a series of operations to save his life – and then preserve it.

“I was wheeled into one of the resus rooms. I saw my dad for the first time,” says Dan. “And the first thing he said to me was, ‘You’re going to be OK. Just one half of you is not there.’

“I was like, ‘What do you mean?’

“He said, ‘One of your legs is gone.’

But he delivered the news carefully. Because of the treatments Dan received it would be 11 days before he fully realised the severity of his other injuries.

Mind in two worlds

Dan returned to Edgware Road station in 2014 for a documentary for BBC Radio 5 Live. It was his first time back there.

He was remembering his memories of the station when the explosion happened.

He had a walking stick in his hand, only this time his left leg was amputated below the knee in 2011 – following 13 years of corrective surgeries on the one he lost initially.

Having experienced the destruction he laid eyes on Khan and realised how close they had been.

“I really regretted not being closer,” Dan recalls.

He has managed to forgive Khan for the physical injuries, but not for what he did to the families who lost loved ones and the annihilation of his life.

Despite protesting vehemently during the clean-up process following the bombings for greater psychological help, Dan was largely left to his own devices for much of the last two decades.

Looking for answers

He endured over 20 years of therapy to bring the flashbacks and almost continuous re-living of those 52 seconds to an end.

Dan says the character of his tormentor has evolved through therapy from the expression of raw fear to acceptance that really, he was doing to Khan what Khan had done to him, destroying them emotionally.

His journey will be documented in a BBC Three film, Surviving 7/7: My Hero, His Hole in My Head and the Hardest Decision of My Life, which outlines both his progress and difficulties.

Twenty years on, he will spend the anniversary with survivors and families in London and contemplating the hole left in his own life by the very public events of that day.

“Those 52 seconds truly changed me as a person forever, he says.”