Bataclan commando: Pure murder in Paris
When I started doing these Paris walk essays for you, I had no idea that I’d write of the declensions of murder. That’s life.
On Friday night I wasn’t in Paris. I was helping a friend who had had an operation and who lives in a suburb. I had no inkling of the attacks until I fiddled, washed myself, woke Karine and finally got coffee into my cup. I turned on my cell phone.
There an unusual number of text messages and Facebook notifications, friends and relatives asking me if I were OK? My niece, who has a gift for delicate understatement that I had not heretofore remarked, wrote, « Uncle Tracy… Paris is looking a bit chaotic. I hope you are safe and well. »
Chaotic? Safe? Well? Karine put on the radio.
We heard then of a commando raid by religious fanatics in three different spots in Paris: so far 128 dead.
More than 80 of the murders happened at the Bataclan, a music venue and café in the area where we and those we love are raising, have raised, our children. Where many friends & acquaintances live.
We return to Paris Saturday evening. We already knew that the Flamenco show we were going to see is cancelled. We have an apéritif in an empty bar and dinner in an almost-empty restaurant in Menilmontant, as above and away as we can get from the scenes of chaos without leaving our usual stomping grounds.
Karine wants to brunch the next morning, Sunday, because she says, the murders are especially an attack on pleasure and joie de vivre. Why else would somebody attack people who are dining together, talking, singing, flirting, dancing, listening to music in their own neighborhood?
Having brunch then a walk under the sweet autumn sunshine, she says, is to laugh into the disapproving scowl of the fanatic murderer, thumb our noses at these bombs and bullets. I’m for that, so we do.
We want to see the scene of the crime, too. I want especially to check on my favorite barman and barmaid, Gaël & Miriam. They are young, their living & work places are near the bloody scenes and I want them to see that I am glad they are alive or know they are dead, if they are.
As we walk east from République to and then along the avenue Parmentier, I tell Karine that these attenats, as far as I can see, are an attack on the young.
« I can’t look at Facebook, » I tell her, because when I opened it the night before, there was a photo of one the young victims. I couldn’t bear to see it …
There, but for the twitch of a butterfly’s wing, go my … Hush, now.
« O, it’s much worse than an attack on young people, » Karine replies, taking her hand out of mine. « It’s an attack on the métisses. »
Métisse means anyone or who has a mixed heritage of any sort. It is no insult.
Karine explained that the young people at the Bataclan or the Petit Cambodge aren’t a « mixed » or « multicultural » crowd. And Bobo - « Bohemian-Bourgeois » - isn’t adequate either. It is just a label made up by the too-numerous jealous souls around us.
« They are a whole new group, » she says, wringing her hands. « They share what is interesting to them, from all sorts of cultures. They are beyond ‘tolerance’ of ‘difference’. They are the babies of tolerance. They can just be themselves in a way we can’t be. »
These young people are the Nouvelle France, devoutly wished for.
The fanatics hate Métisses, Karine tells me, scrupulously avoiding my eye, because fanatics are fascinated by « purity ». Religious, cultural, racial or whatever else purity you might imagine.
« They feel compelled to separate the sheep from the goats, » she says, « Rape the maiden, worship the mother, always be judging the good and the bad, living life as if it’s bad to be drunk on bad wine but good to be stinking drunk on good liquor!»
As we walk, Karine meshes her fingers and stretches her hands in front of her. At the Bataclan or in the sidewalk cafés, she continues, the murderers came face to face with existential impurity.
« What they fear most of all, » she says, « Is the fruit of love and liberté, égalité, solidarité! That’s what they hate.» She stares straight ahead, walking fast now.
« It is why they are so ferocious and so pitiless with people. It is why they hate women so much.»
I give her a long, considering look. Karine has two adolescent children, Juliette and Hassan, whose father is a high-income professional green-eyed son of poor Algerian immigrants. They have their mother’s nose and their father’s eyes. And she does NOT want to talk of them.
We walk a long time without speaking. I dare not put my arm around her, though I would very much like to. I would like to tell her that I love her and her Nouvelles Frances and her hopes and dreams and deceptions too and all together and at the same time.
Instead, I touch her shoulder and suggest we take the metro at Voltaire-Léon Blum.
Vive un monde métisse. Vive la Nouvelle France.
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