Here we go again
Last night we were finishing supper at a restaurant in the 12ème arrondissement with friends visiting from New York, when they got a text from their daughter in Salt Lake City, asking if they were all right. We brushed it off, imagined some minor incident blown out of proportion as it often is on the 24-hour news channels. We parted ways, they in a taxi, we on the métro, Line 9. A voice came over the loud speakers every minute, informing passengers that the police had ordered the stops at Filles du Calvaire and République closed. It made for an eerie atmosphere, but people got on and off the métro impassively. We had no idea of what was happening right above our heads on street level.
Back home, my phone rang as I was about to turn on the television and it was my panicked son Christopher from London, asking if we were all right.
20 people were dead, he told us. The girlfriend of a close friend of his had been shot but was still alive. William, though he'd been in the area an hour earlier, was safe, he said, their dad too. Another son Nick, who was in Paris just for the night to give a concert, was okay.
My plan on coming home yesterday evening was to post a cute little blog on the minor chaos that falling leaves create every autumn in Paris. Then I was going to go to bed early so we could get our 9h00 train this morning to Berlin.
Instead we sat numbly in front of the television, exactly as we had 10 months earlier during the Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher shootings (also just before a departure for Berlin) in January.
Instead of falling leaves we saw fallen bodies. We held our breaths and listened to shots as the BRI special police brigade stormed the Bataclan. We tried to register the ballooning death toll.
After a few hours sleep, we simply couldn't leave for Berlin this morning, are still here in Paris, relieved our family is safe but otherwise just as stunned, shocked and sad as all of you who have kindly sent messages.
Here we go again.
