November 13th

People have been asking me where the next blog post is, so I’m sitting here trying to find words for what is happening in my life. There are plenty of things I could write about; my trips to Brussels or Dublin, the various cafés I’ve been to, the funny things the boys say, but writing about any of that seems like I would be ignoring the elephant in the room. Everyone wants to know about Paris after November 13^th. I think most people are trying to be polite and not ask, but if you did ask, I guess this is what I would tell you:

Oberkampf, the area where most of the attacks occurred, reminds me of a much longer Broad Ripple Avenue. Bars and restaurants line the streets, full of students and young people who are enjoying themselves at the end of a long weekday or during a busy weekend. The last time I lived in Paris, we went out in Oberkampf all the time. We had specific bars we frequented and even knew exactly which crepe stand had the best ham, cheese, and mushroom crepe at 2am. We spent countless nights in Oberkampf living our lives, laughing, making new friends and enjoying old ones. The weekend of November 6^th was the first time I had made it back to Oberkampf this year. We were on a rooftop bar, tucked off the main road, and I remember looking at the Sacre-Coeur and wondering if life could get better. I was having a conversation with a 20 year old friend of a friend who was spending a few months traveling around Europe and I remember thinking to myself; my god, I can’t believe that people come here for vacation, and I get to really live here. 

On the way home, I looked around the street and saw that people were hanging Christmas lights. I knew I wanted to come back and wander the streets when they were turned on. That is why on the 12^th of November, when my friends asked what we should do that weekend, I suggested walking around Oberkampf & Canal Saint Martin to look at lights. We planned to make mulled wine at a friend’s apartment and walk through the streets of Paris on the 13^th of November. The strangest thing for me is that I never make decisions. When people ask me what I want to do, my answer is always “Oh, up to you! No worries, I’ll do anything,” and it’s the same answer when people ask where I want to eat, what movie I want to see, what party I want to go to, anything. Even if someone picks something I don’t necessarily want to do, I tend to go with the flow. On the 12^th of November, I chose. Without hesitating, I said Canal Saint Martin. 

The afternoon of the 13^th, my friends suggested that instead of the canal, we could go to the Christmas Market that had just opened on the Champs Elysees on the opposite side of the city. Because of my ‘go with the flow’ nature, I agreed. “Sure! Up for anything!” Changing plans meant that we changed locations for where we planned to meet-up. We decided to meet at a friend’s apartment near the Eiffel Tower. If we had kept our original plans we would have been right in the middle of the action. I don’t know what word to use here. I don’t want to call it ‘action’ because I feel like that trivializes the events. I also don’t want to call it terror, although I suppose that is the exact word to use. I just don’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing that they caused terror in the streets of my city. 

At any rate, I got off work, changed and got ready to leave. At 10:00pm I got onto the metro. When I got off the metro at 10:20pm, I got a text from my friend that said “Call me.” I thought, well that’s super weird, I’m going to be at the apartment in 5 minutes….I’m sure she just meant to type, call me if you need the door code, or something. My phone plan only has 2 hours of calls a month, and my host mom told me to try to save it in case of emergencies, so I ignored it and kept walking. I walked by groups of people standing around outside. I walked past a party at a ground floor apartment that spilled into the courtyard outside. College aged kids who were smoking and drinking and generally enjoying themselves were everywhere, like always. I got into my friend’s building and entered the elevator. I hit the button for her floor. When the doors opened, there were my friend’s faces staring back at me. I jumped. 

“OH MY GOD, thank god you’re here.” 

“What?”

“Oh, of course, you don’t know what’s happening. Come on.” 

And into the apartment we went as they started telling me what was happening around the city. When I reflect back, I feel a bit silly that we were all so scared, because we were nowhere near the action. But at the time, we had no idea what was happening. It was chaotic. Anywhere could have been next. We were close to the Eiffel Tower. We wondered out loud several times if someone would try to hurt people in the area where we were because the Eiffel Tower is such a huge landmark. We spent the next hours reading breaking news on every form of social media that was available to us. First came the report of a possible bomb at the Stade de France and then a shooting in the street in Oberkampf. Slowly, reports started rolling in about the other attacks. The screen flashed “hostages taken at the Bataclan” and I think that was the point where I realized the gravity of the situation. Our phones started exploding with concerned messages from family and friends. At any given time, one of us was on the phone or facetiming with family members letting them know we were safe. We sent out group texts to friends that we weren’t with, trying to figure out where they were. We couldn’t get a hold of some people. My phone died twice. I watched as Parisians began to use the hashtag #porteouverte on Twitter to let anyone who was trying to seek shelter find someone with extra space on their couch, or floor, or hallway, so that they could go inside and be safe. 

It wasn’t until an hour after the first attack that we realized we should turn on the news. We turned on the TV and saw President Obama speaking. I quietly cried. I’m always the first to cry over anything. 

We sat in silence watching the “death toll” number rise on the screen.  We kept obsessively checking the internet for new information. We got angry at the news anchors on the channel we were watching; they kept spouting their own opinions over what was happening and repeating the “known facts” over and over until they lost their meaning; but looking back, what were they supposed to do? I’m sure they were told they had to cover and commentate on the live feed. How do you come up with the accurate words to pair with horrifying events as they happen? It has taken me a week to be able to sit down and write this, and I’m not even sure “comprehensive” could be used to describe my written feelings.  

We wanted information, but no one could give it to us. People wanted information from us, and we couldn’t give it to them. We were helpless. We had blind guesses as to what was happening. At the beginning we wondered if it was sports related, we then wondered if it had something to do with the climate change conference happening here, then we blamed terrorists, we talked about the attack the day before in Beirut; all these ideas and theories but no facts…we were lost. We wrote things on Facebook, we “checked-in” as safe, we chatted with people via Instagram, & Whatsapp; we knew we weren’t leaving the apartment any time in the near future. To be honest, it’s a bit of a blur. It’s a blur of conversations, website refreshing and small bursts of laughter; as perverse as that sounds. We didn’t know what to do, so I started showing my friends videos of cute small animals. We would laugh for the duration of the 30 second video and then go back to the television where they were showing police carrying bodies. We didn’t know how to appropriately react or manage our emotions. We drank our mulled wine as we listened to people describing the streets as ‘apocalypic’ and likening it to ‘scenes from a horror film.’ 

Knowing that none of us would be leaving, at 3AM we all put on borrowed pajamas, washed our faces, rubbed some toothpaste on our teeth with our fingers and lay down sideways across the queen size bed. Four grown girls, not sure what the next move was. We tossed and turned, none of us really able to sleep, none of us very comfortable, but comforted in the fact that at least we were together; we weren’t home alone when it happened, or worse, out in the streets. 

We woke up around 7AM to more information but still no real answers. Eventually, all we wanted to know was if it was safe to go outside and go home. We watched the news in the morning, seeing the victim count higher than it had been when we tried to sleep, and we just felt sad. We were sad for everyone. The interesting thing about this kind of grief was that I don’t feel like I was allowed to feel it. I’m not French, no one I knew was hurt or injured, I had never been to any of the locations, and I stayed safe with my friends all night. I felt guilty being sad. I felt that by being sad about the situation, I was giving myself more of an important role in the events, like I was more involved, more affected, when really, my sadness paled in comparison to the sadness experienced by other people who woke up that morning. 

Why was I sad? I was so sad for the people who didn’t survive the night, because I had been them. I was almost them that night. I had been out in those streets the weekend before, the month before, in years before. I passed many Friday evenings in a tiny purple apartment in Republic; I followed my friends into the masses of people crowding the sidewalks; I spent my hard-earned money in a dark corner of a bar; I giggled as I tried to order two crepes at once and then, just like that, I made it home, safely to my bed. These people didn’t. I felt sad for their families, who likely heard there was an attack in the city on Friday night, and tried in vain to reach their loved one all night long, only to have no response. I felt sad for the people posting pictures of their loved ones to Twitter and Facebook, asking, begging, praying for information. Even for survivors, their post-traumatic stress has to be unlike any I’ve ever known. With all of that sadness, I still felt out of place, like I was an onlooker, feeling sad about something that didn’t concern me at all. 

So many people reached out to me to ask if I was okay and how I was handling the whole thing. “I’m sad” felt so trivial. So I resorted to speaking out about the French as a whole. “The French people this… the French people that…” I never felt like I could say “We.” It felt like when you go to the funeral of an acquaintance and although you feel sad, you know there are people, like members of their immediate family, who are sadder than you. Your friends tell you that they are ‘sorry for your loss’ but you feel like the deceased doesn’t belong to you in that way. They were someone you knew, maybe even someone you loved, but they weren’t yours.  I knew I was allowed to be sad, but my sad felt different then the sad of the Parisian people, but that didn’t make it any less real.

My sadness was also wrapped up in what I thought would be the loss of my idyllic image of Paris. I have told people time and time again about how safe I feel here. I have never been scared in this city. With two terrorist attacks in under a year, do I allow myself to get scared now? If I allow myself to be scared, the terrorists win; but the fear is a very real emotion. How do you continue living normally after that?

All of these thoughts were swimming around in my head Saturday morning as I tried to walk back to my apartment. I assumed the streets would be bare. Museums, parks, schools, markets and any other government related buildings were closed, and I assumed the streets would be empty and I’d be walking through a ghost city to get back to my apartment. 

I stepped out into the sunshine with my friend and saw a little old lady walking her dog. It felt so normal that it immediately became surreal. All the sudden, we started to notice that there were people everywhere. People were walking on the streets; people were talking to each other like it was any other Saturday. We started to walk home. We passed a Monoprix, and were unsure if any other stores would be open so we went inside to get food for the weekend. The security guard stared at us; there were many other people in the store doing their Saturday morning grocery shopping. The woman at the cash register looked bored. I remember thinking to myself, how is everyone so normal? I also remember thinking; I don’t want to be in this Monoprix for longer than I have to. I felt like a sitting duck. That’s the strangest feeling; to feel like it might be dangerous to stay somewhere too long. I have never felt that way before.

We kept walking home and I will never forget walking down Rue de Sevres and seeing a man hanging Christmas lights. He probably picked up right where he left off at 5pm Friday evening. It was at that exact moment that I realized the beauty of France and Parisians, and I knew my idyllic Paris was still there. You can’t and won’t scare the French. In fact, they’ll be damned if you ruin their Saturday. Yes, for many people, that weekend was ruined. But life continues. My mom said she saw pictures online of little old men outside in front of their shops, washing blood off their sidewalks. I’m crying even now, just thinking about it. They pick up and move on. The bakery by my apartment was open. I went in and got a baguette. The cashier sold it to me and smiled. People were greeting each other in the street as if they were old friends; children were going to birthday parties and laughing. If you didn’t know what horrible things had happened the night before, you wouldn’t have known. I was so confused. I wanted to be sad, and I was. But I was also intrigued by how the restaurant next to my house had a terrace full of people, eating their lunch. I was so proud to be living among such strong willed people.

When you let the terrorists scare you out of your normal life and habits, they win. I will never forget a Facebook post by a good friend. It was a picture of him holding a beer with the caption “Meme pas peur, toujours soif.” Not even scared, still thirsty. I think normalcy was the most beautiful thing that Parisians could give to each other that day. They also gave each other hope, love, and strength. The Place de la Republic became a spontaneous memorial. Piles of flowers and candles and photos and trinkets line the monument at the center. My Facebook news feed quickly filled up with stories of people who saved other people’s lives, of beautiful tributes to victims, a video of two young guys going to the memorial and getting people to tell each other jokes, a video of the little boy and his dad talking about flowers, a video of a blindfolded Muslim man asking people to hug him if they trusted him. It also filled up with more and more requests for help finding missing family members, each one being shared by complete strangers hoping to help ease someone’s pain. I saw pictures of people standing in lines that were wrapped around the block to donate blood. I eventually heard that so many people tried to donate blood that they had to send people away. I saw an invite for an event “A Candle in Every Window” in Paris. I bought candles and put them in my windows. I watched as the world wept with Paris. But I heard the Parisians reply to their tears with, “please don’t.”  They responded to the hashtag #prayforparis with #prayfortheworld and #parisisaboutlife. A beautiful cartoon came from the artists at Charlie Hebdo “Ceux qui aiment. Ceux qui aiment la vie. A la fin, c’est toujours eux qui gagnent” Those who love. Those who love life. At the end, they are always the winners. Paris didn’t want the world’s tears or hate, Paris wanted the world’s love. 

I have never felt so much love in a city, so much pride, so much determination to continue living. I feel blessed every second I spend in this amazing city, and every chance I get to learn from it’s beautiful and wise people. I could spend more time talking to you about the sad things that have happened after and how much I want to hug all of you at home and tell you that I love you (and I do), but I want to leave it at this. Paris is about life, and it always will be. No one can take the life out of France. The Eiffel Tower was dark the Sunday after the attacks, but when it lit back up, it was breathtaking. It was blue, white, and red and it stood taller and stronger than I have ever seen it. The city motto since at least 1358 was projected upon it: FLUCTUAT NEC MERGITUR.  TOSSED BUT NOT SUNK. 

That is the Paris I know. 

(Thank you to travel and film for this photo.)