I called a dear friend today to wish her happy birthday, and ten minutes or so into our conversation, she asked me, ‘Have you watched or listened to the news today?’ There’s been a terrorist attack at Lindt Café in Martin Place. Many people were taken hostage.’

Wham! Whatever else I was thinking about (and I’ve got a fair bit on my plate today) just went to some backburner in my mind. I’m many kilometres away from Martin Place (110 km, to be precise), but many years ago I used to go to Lindt Café before teaching a Spanish lesson in the area. I used to enjoy that little treat immensely and the mere thought of that café (or any other café for that matter) being in the hands of a terrorist group, or a terrorist individual, sends chills up and down my spine.

Here’s the ABC link to the story, which I rate as a wonderful reporting source. I’m no news reporter, and the ABC does a much better job than any other news agency or group in Australia.

My feeling of déjà vu comes from my other life in Buenos Aires, when the Israeli Embassy was hit by a suicide bomber in 1992, and when the Jewish Community Building was destroyed exactly in the same way in 1994. The consequences of those two attacks were far worse by comparison, with death tolls reaching hundreds of victims.

It isn’t the facts by themselves that I’m comparing here. It’s the sense that as much as we would like to believe that we ‘rule’ our lives, this isn’t entirely true. Neither the employees nor the customers of Lindt Café had ‘made plans’ to become terrorist targets today.

At the time of the Israeli Embassy bombing in 1992, I used to work round the corner. That day I didn’t have to go to work. In any case, my knees gave in when I heard the news on the radio. When I did go back to work, I heard the stories of people that had been killed or seriously injured, and couldn’t really come to terms with it, not immediately at least. My ex-husband’s auntie used to live just opposite the Israeli Embassy, but luckily she wasn’t hurt.

The facts, the geography, the outcomes and even the language are different, but the over-awing sense of not being ‘in control’, of not knowing what will happen next are very much part of what I feel today, as it was then, when I was living in Buenos Aires many years ago.

However, there’s something that is fully in our hands, even in the face of adversity: how we deal with it; how we react to it; what we learn from it. In his Facebook status, a friend of mine expressed that whatever the outcome of the Lindt Café hostage episode, it shouldn’t be used to create hatred and polarisation between the Muslim community and the rest of the Australian population. His wise words will stay with me forever.

Let’s hope for the best outcome for the hostages and exercise calm to make the police forces’ job as easy as possible. Rioting in the streets is the last thing we need. In the meantime, I know that my sense of déjà vu is pretty much mine, but I wanted to share it with you.