Terror In Paris: ‘It Was Like A War Zone’

Photo: Getty

Considering it was November, it was a beautiful night on Friday the 13th. As I often do at the end of the week, I went to my friend Alain Hing’s wine bar Au Quai, next to the Canal Saint-Martin, in the 10th arrondissement.

There were big crowds on the heated terraces of Le Petit Cambodge restaurant and Le Carillon café. The customers are young, hip and happy. I was enjoying an excellent Beaujolais with my friend and colleague, Véronique Girard.

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It was 9.20pm when suddenly there was a deafening noise and we froze. “Firecrackers”, some customers said. I thought immediately of gunfire. One burst, then two, then three. It goes on and on. Alain ran out to see what was happening and rushed back and shouted “Catherine, call the police, people have been killed!”

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I walked outside. In front of the Carillon, in the middle of overturned chairs and broken glass, there were bodies lying on the pavement. Where a few minutes earlier people were drinking a beer, smoking a cigarette, chatting, laughing, there was an eerie silence. A few of us stood there, terror-stricken, speechless at the sight of this absolute war scene. Then sounds were heard again. I could hear screaming and a man sobbing. Two firemen arrived. A rumour was going around that the assailants, in a black car, were spreading death by shooting at other cafés with machine-guns. We learned from text messages that suicide bombers had blown themselves up at the Stade de France.

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This is war and I only had one thought in mind: protect my son Marty. I didn’t want him to take the underground when he finished at school where he was rehearsing a play. I called his father so [that] he would catch a taxi to get him.

Then the police cordoned off the area, sealed off the district and yelled orders. We watched the first evacuations of the injured before retreating inside the bar where we lost all notion of time. Clinging to our mobiles, we reassured our loved ones and, distraught, follow the bloody events taking place in Paris.

Alain closed his bar this weekend “out of respect for the victims”. But, I swear, next Friday we’ll all be there with a good bottle of wine. Because we refuse to give in to fear and because we, the people of France and Paris, are fiercely attached to our freedom and republican values. Why did Islamists strike at the very heart of the 10th arrondissement, where I have been living for 25 years?

Photo: Getty

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Because, as Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, explained: “The districts that were targeted are places we love, the Paris we love, this working-class Paris, this very open Paris. Fanatics, people who want to silence the whole of mankind cannot stand this model of convivial living”. No, we will not be silenced and here at marie claire, where we never stopped fighting for the freedom of women, so dearly won, we will keep on defending our freedom of thought as well as our freedom to love and live as we please.