Found this article this morning... I've been trying to follow the story since one of our members knows him.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/story/0,16141,1525899,00.html
We are still searching for Christian
My friend didn't care about fame, now his face is all over the papers
Vanessa Walters
Monday July 11, 2005
The Guardian
Mothers get through first. That's the rule. You have a dozen friends; if you can't get through to one, you try another. But your mother only has you. She will call you, hang up, call, hang up. My mother tried me for an hour before getting through.
So then I was on the phone, trying one friend, then another. The moment you realise something might have happened to someone you love is a moment of disbelief - almost hilarious disbelief. When I considered for the first time that my housemate had not been in contact with anyone since he left for work on Thursday morning, I laughed - so far-fetched was the idea that he might actually be a victim of the bombing. It took a few minutes of sober consideration before the serious work of ringing round began.
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I rang the hotline. It felt an age before I got through to an operator who patiently took down all the details and promised to be in touch. What, aren't you going to run through the database and tell me where he is, I asked naively. It doesn't work like that, said the operator. You give details, we log them and then we call you.
The operator suggests calling A&E departments. None had a Christian Small (and if they had, they might not have told me as I am not next-of-kin - and I could even be the bomber, one nurse informed me in a surreal moment of mutual frustration). Still, I've got to do something, so I hound UCH about their 30-year-old "unknown" man.
The term "unknown" features in almost every conversation about Christian over the next 12 hours. I look for Christian's car. He usually parks in a restriction-free street five minutes' walk from the station, but I can't find it. About 11pm, my other housemate sets out to visit the hospitals armed with information and photos of Christian. She returns at 3am with the grim news that there aren't many "unknowns". We try not to think of bodies stacked up under King's Cross.
In the morning we call the marketing company where Christian works. He didn't make it to the office. I call his parents and let them know. His mother arrives half an hour later. We watch the Queen talk to survivors at the Royal London hospital. Our spirits rise as unknowns in intensive care are matched with the missing.
We call the London Evening Standard and get Christian's photo in. We do the round of hospitals again, but by the time we leave the last one - the Royal Free - we are demoralised, almost unable to speak. The conclusions we are trying not to draw are terrible. It is better not to think at all.
We arrive home to find redtop reporters combing our street. Christian's photo has found its way to all the major news channels. He never cared about fame. He has always cared about social inequality here and around the world. In his eyes, events such as 9/11 stemmed from misery created by global inequality and it would be both ironic and horrible if actions taken in response to Thursday's bombings were to deepen those injustices.
We grew up together. Always slightly too serious for his years, he was thoughtful and earnest - initiating house debates on anything from Live 8 to gay black Tory Derek Laud in Big Brother. Christian recently changed his name to Njoya Diawara-Small. For most of his adult years he had been trying to define himself, and on a journey of self-discovery to Africa found that the name Njoya Diawara, meaning a man of strong spirit, explained him better.
We're up at the crack of dawn with posters and leaflets with details of Christian, as I still think of him. Have you seen this man? At King's Cross we are mobbed, largely by the foreign press, and have to be rescued by police officers.
We check the Royal London but there is only one more "unknown" - a woman. Most of the injured have now been allowed home. Only the serious cases remain. There isn't the same chaos at the hospitals as 24 hours earlier. There are still bodies in the tube tunnel between Russell Square and King's Cross. Rumours circulate about a carriage so stuffed with bodies that faces press up against the glass, about bodies blown up beyond identifiability, about a recovery mission that will take weeks, not days.
We are still looking for Christian's silver Mitsubishi Colt, P605 RWY. And we are still trying to piece together his journey from the moment he left this house at 8am on Thursday.
We are also talking to our second family liaison officer. The first officer who took precious photos of Christian never contacted us or returned our calls after initially taking down the information. Turns out he wasn't our officer at all and we are still trying to get our photos back.
We are not exactly racing against time, more against the ebb and flow of our hope, which is slowly going out, like the tide.
· Vanessa Walters is a playwright and novelist; Christian Small / Njoya Diawara has been missing since Thursday morning.
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