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Throw TheLiving Silverware
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Well.
Today is the day.
10 years ago, at around this time, ten armed madmen started spreading death through Paris and Saint-Denis, leaving 132 dead in their wake, hundreds more wounded, thousands traumatized, and millions in shock.
Killed for enjoying life, going to music shows, or just having fun evening with friends at a restaurant or a café
I was a child then, I didn't understand all of what had happened then
It probably took me years to fully realize the sheer horror of it
(My parents wisely kept me away from the images, in fact I don't think I saw any up until earlier today)
But I remember the days after
My parents pulling me and my brother in the kitchen the next day, explaining to us "Listen, there's been a terrorist attack in Paris, lots of people have been killed"
We didn't really know what to make of it
Yet another minute of silence when returning to class on Monday, so soon after Charlie Hebdo
The teachers trying to talk with us about what had happened, themselves very shocked obviously
The flags raised everywhere, the little placards proclaiming state of emergency often near
And now?
Where are we, ten years later?
No one can tell
We cried and raged and fought
We made justice for our dead and wounded
But we kept going on
We still go to concerts and restaurants
French national team is playing again today
We kept living
I'll end by transcribing part of the speech of Arthur Dénouveaux, president of Life for Paris, an association of survivors, in today's ceremonies:
SpoilerI would have liked to tell you that hope carried us, but it is wrong, it traces no path. In the end, us, the victims, have nothing to offer you but a demand. To live in society according to the values that made France and its democracy a model.
We have no cure against the claustrophobia of this present, that the past lights no more and whose future seems elusive.
But we learned one thing. You only defend well what you love. Defending life in its most beautiful is refusing to give in to fear. Refusing to believe that one can go further alone than together. And refusing to believe that one can refrain from thinking. But it is also and most of all far more than to refuse, it's to love. To love humor, to love transmission, to love each other. [...]
I believe that you should not wish to leave a better world to your children, you should fight every day to live in a better world with them. Now and relentlessly, not give in to anything, relativize nothing. The 132 names behind me tell me with much more strength, life is so fragile, you have to love it.
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That’s something I really like about the French. (In my French class, they taught us a few cultural things as well as the language.) You remember what happened. You can still see things from WWII and other important things like that in everyday life, constantly. You honor the past while striving towards a greater future.
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