Mourning Paris

(14 November 2015)
There is a candlelit vigil in Place Kleber tonight. The statue of Jean Baptiste Kléber is very stern in the flickering light, and the heavy shadows. A woman is crying as she lights her candle. Her hand is shaking a lot; it's making her entire body tremble. She is being rocked back and forth by a woman I assume is her mother. They are the spitting image of each other.

It's very strange here this evening. There are the mourners and there are the people who are always hanging around the statue. They are being very loud, laughing and swearing. They have made the vigil into an absurdity. How funny it sounds to hear French people (very drunk French people, mind you) sing along to Fetty Wap when even babies do not make a sound.

It is not drizzling, because although few, the drops that fall are fat and heavy. For weeks Strasbourg was unseasonably mild, but today it is cold. It may rain. It will rain as children cry, with tears falling to the tune of Trap Queen, which blares irreverently from a battered boom box.

Some of the candles have gone out. Some people relight the ones that have enough wick left, the ones that were blown out by wind, or upset by stomping feet. I burn my finger because the wind blew the flame onto my thumb. I hand the lighter to Anna and set the little tea candle down carefully, pushing it to an open space. 

Still it does not rain. 

It feels wrong to fall back into life's normal patterns; it feels like we ought to stop everything and be quiet and serious, and light candles. But that is not how the world is. The world would have us listen to American rappers insult women and go home, and forget after a while that 129 people died. 

Some people will never forget. We are lucky to forget.

Reflections From the Day After

Paris bleeds again. It was not so long ago that "Je Suis Charlie" posters papered every wall, every light post, every Facebook profile picture. In fact, I saw it from the tram just now, hanging faded in a store window, just past Langstross Grande Rue.

My mother told me to come home. Now. I told her that Hollande had declared "un Etats d'urgence"and closed the borders. And my mother cried. I don't think she misunderstood me, but that she knew my returning home was impossible.

We had heard about the Paris attacks last night at my friend's apartment. We were safe, warm, and happily buzzed. All of a sudden:

"Merde!" Romain said.

We did not pay much attention at first. He repeated himself and said something very quickly in French. I heard only "Paris" "terreur" and "18 morts". That was how we found out about the bombs at the friendly German-French soccer match, a game between two Western giants. The president was there, and we heard first that he was safely evacuated, and then that everyone else was. If they could be evacuated, that is.

We kept refreshing open pages on our devices. We learned that hostages were taken at the Bataclan. Nobody knew exactly how many, then 12, maybe, and then 100s. The death tolls jumped. Shootings, more than one.

"Merde!"

And contained in the word we heard the shock, the anger, and the horror- it was too early yet for fear to permeate his voice. The word had lost its original meaning, floating in the air as some audible representation of not Romain's sentiments, but of all of France. And it became vulgar for a different reason.

We left. The death toll doubled by the time I left my friends and descended onto Gare Central, climbed the escalator, and went home. Everywhere in the streets I heard:

"Paris! Paris!" There were other words too, but they blended together until they became fuzzy, and melted into the background.

There was also echoes of Romain's expletive:

"Merde!" Especially the men smoking by the tram stop.

When I arrived at my door, I shut it behind me like I was afraid to wake up the building. It was not yet 11.

"Here it is different,"Claire told me when she came home. Everyone knows someone in Paris." That is true, even for us; some Syracuse students had gone to the soccer game, and my roommate had gone to see Versailles.

I stayed up very late with Claire, watching the news. Listening to big, important men in expensive suits give speeches. Listening to the silence outside her window.

Nomophobia

To burn
the bridges of your past
is easy.
Just forget to take care.
let die
all the photographs you saved.
no more.
Cry, if you want to,
or rage,
but it doesn't matter.
They're gone.


Last week I went to Morocco. We were mugged. When I got back, I erased the wrong device. The end.