Memories From the Bataclan

Like so many others, I have a very clear memory of the evening of November 13th, 2015. That night, I wasn’t out and about in Paris as I so often was at that time, working evenings all over the city, but was spending a quiet evening at home with my family.

I heard about the terrorist attack indirectly. At the time, my phone had limited functionality, and I didn’t spend much time checking Twitter or news sites. I realised something was wrong after receiving a flood of messages from various people, family and friends, asking if I was okay and if I was safe. Their simultaneity alerted me to the fact that something unusual had happened. All these people who were trying to reach me knew that I was often out in the evening and were worried that on that particular day I might have been in the area hit by the attacks. Being totally averse to any form of metal music, there was obviously little chance of me being in the Bataclan concert hall, but I could very well have been wandering around the Bastille district where the carnage continued with the terrorist commando’s attacks on café terraces. It was quite mild that evening for November, and there were people outside.

So I took the time to find out what was happening by turning on the television news, before reassuring everyone who had asked about me. The “I’m safe” feature had been introduced on Facebook a little less than a year earlier. That evening, it was used by many of my contacts. It had been designed for natural disasters, but it proved quite useful in these circumstances.

The news of the terrorist attack came as a huge shock and everyone was overcome with mixed feelings. Anger, shock, fear—it was difficult to make sense of it all. I remember that, for me, two thoughts emerged quite clearly from the fog. 

The first thought was about what had happened in the Bataclan concert hall. That evening, the band performing was an American group called Eagles of Death Metal. I said a prayer for all the poor people who were trapped in the hall and died that night. During the concert, one of the songs performed by the band had the lyrics: “Who’s going to love the devil? Who will love his song? Who will love the devil and his song?…” No one, and for good reason, would ever hear the conclusion of the song, which was supposed to be: “I will love the devil and his song!” I saw this as an ominous sign: invoking evil and death can never be harmless.

My second thought was of a dramatic and bloody episode in French history: the attacks carried out by the FLN (National Liberation Front) on the terraces of bars and cafés in Algiers during the Algerian War. The attack on the Milk Bar on Place Bugeaud, where children coming back from the beach liked to enjoy ice cream, or the one on the cafeteria on Rue Michelet. Blind killings, striking innocent victims, sometimes women and children, rather than  honourably confronting French army soldiers, in order to plunge the European population into terror and push it to leave, in accordance with the infamous adage: “the suitcase or the coffin.”

At the time of the attacks, I was teaching art history at a higher education institution located a stone’s throw from the cafés that had been hit by the November 13th commando. A few days later, I returned to have lunch in one of these small restaurants, the Café des Anges, frequented by a whole population of students and young professionals. The atmosphere was heavy with anxiety, and the waiters moved between the small wooden tables with blank expressions and without saying a word. One of them told me that five members of the staffhad been killed in the attack on the café La Belle Equipe, where they had gathered to celebrate a birthday. Service had not returned to its usual pace, but no one would have thought of admonishing the waiters for their slowness in bringing the bill.

The attacks of November 13th remain the most serious terrorist attack ever experienced by France and the second deadliest attack in Europe, after the Madrid bombings in 2004. “This is an act of war committed by a terrorist army, Daesh,” declared President François Hollande on the night of the attacks. Indeed, it was a war—the worst kind, a cowardly and indiscriminate war, without the honour of uniform. Through our history, we French had already paid the price of Islamist terror in Algeria. Unfortunately, no lessons were learned. 

Once the shock had passed, the media excelled in their ability to evade reference to who was responsible for the massacre.  For some, the term “Islamist terrorism” was difficult to accept and utter. Pleas full of good intentions, terribly inadequate in the face of the event, flourished in the press and on the internet, such as the open letter by a young father of a little boy whose wife had died at the Bataclan: “You will not have my hatred.” A sentimental, well-written and seemingly compassionate text, but one that would provide thousands of good souls, falsely enamoured with humanity, with an excuse not to face reality—that of the Islamist offensive against Christian France, a France sinking into decadence. 

Thirst for justice and the will to fight for victory are not hatred. Since November 13th, we have had neither justice, nor victory. History always repeats itself painfully. In 1962, France handed over the keys to Algeria to the terrorists of the FLN. Today, it still has not found a way to face up to its past and, through the fault of weak and impotent politicians, exposes itself to endless suffering under the sharp edge of Islamism—which has neither compassion nor humanity.