The day after Friday the 13th was unseasonably warm in Paris, so was the day that followed.
At the statue in Place de Republique it was sunny enough that fruit flies hovered above the thousands of floral tributes and hand-drawn messages.
In the early hours of Tuesday, it began to rain. I opened the window and thought about the flowers and pieces of paper getting wet and the candles snuffed out by raindrops. I thought about how it might all look the next day, soggy and streaked, and how more Parisians would come to lay more tributes on top.
I thought about the Bataclan. Just before dusk we had walked along Boulevard Voltaire and looked up at the theatre’s tall, strangely coloured façade and the gorgeous six-storey Parisian apartment block right next to it, just ten feet away across the narrow passage that was the scene of unimaginable horror.
The Bataclan, behind police tape, was much larger than I had imagined. I’ve been to over 200 rock concerts in my life so when a venue is described as 1,500 capacity I picture a medium-sized hall. Evidently, the rooms to the top of the building extend its height. I don’t know what they are used for but from the harrowing account of Sebastian, the poor, brave man who the Isis gunmen designated as their “guide” for over two hours during the siege (and who later rescued a pregnant woman dangling from the window ledge), it sounds like a labyrinth of narrow corridors and doors.
I thought about myself inside the theatre, which has stood on that spot since 1864. The Eagles of Death Metal tour bus was still parked outside; part of the crime scene being investigated by police in white boiler suits. I thought about a girl I know who is friends with the band and gets backstage tickets whenever they play live. I thought about when I saw the band supporting Arctic Monkeys at Wembley Stadium in 2009. I thought about an old school friend paralysed for life in the Mumbai attacks. I thought about how much I love rock and roll, football and eating out at restaurants; like all those who died. I tried to comprehend what a gunman must feel, standing in the doorway firing into a crowd of fun-loving people at a music concert, but it’s beyond my comprehension. I tried to feel fear, but there was no fear in me.
There was something indescribable in the air outside the Bataclan. Yes, it was sorrow but it was also something charged, almost mystical. It was the sound of hundreds of people mourning in the modern way. Camera shutters, the flick of lighters, gentle murmurs, polite surges as reporters recognised someone in the public eye, the sound of sticky tape being ripped off to attach handwritten messages of condolence, love and peace.
At Republique, I heard only French voices. The tourists have deserted, replaced by the world’s media. Dozens of news vans surround the square with small marquees. CNN’s Anderson Cooper with his unmistakeable silver hair. Channel 4’s Jon Snow, with his unmistakeable silver hair. Their cameramen wandered into the crowds where something very Parisian was happening. Muslims, non-Muslims, Arabs, Jews, black people, white people, Asian people—all of them French—were having impassioned debates about Islam, religion, politics, peace and Frenchness. It was something you’d never see in reserved London, but would definitely see in boisterous Trinidad.
On Monday lunchtime the schoolchildren were playing as noisily as ever in the school playground on my street. Life away from the “war” zones of the 10eme and 11eme has carried on largely as normal, though there is a noticeable tension on the Metro and young Arab men are on edge: in their body language and eye contact they are saying “please don’t be afraid of me.”
So what next? Nobody knows—which ought to cause fear. As humans, we tend to want to know there is a predictable, safe and happy future.
One little boy, asked by a reporter if he understood what happened, said the bad guys with guns are really mean and that his family may have to move house. His father reassured him that they don’t, and that “France is our home.” When the boy said again that they have guns and could shoot us, the father told him, “It’s okay, they have guns but we have flowers to fight against guns.”
That’s all we ordinary folk have: our courage and our love. There are those like Francois Hollande with the power to drop bombs and there are few people who will criticise his immediate reaction of carpet bombing Isis strongholds in Syria. While we have seen a rare glimpse of gritty Paris’ softer compassionate side in the aftermath of the attacks, Hollande is furious; with the look of a man whose own children have been attacked.
Whether it is possible to wipe out Isis entirely, only time will tell. But our children’s futures will be much happier if we, Europe and the Middle East united, can rid the world of this modern plague.