Paris: Locals defiantly continue normal life - 'otherwise the terrorists win'

Mourning Parisians are reclaiming their lives, reopening restaurants and trying to explain the atrocity to their children

People remember the dead outside Notre Dame (Reuters)

Beside the maple tree, taped to the wall of the launderette, was a different message of defiance: “I shoot with my favourite weapon: l’amour.”

And at the foot of the statue representing a now wounded republic nearby, a blunt message: “For France, strong, united and indivisible.” Sometimes, the defiance was tinged with anger. “Know this, terrorists,” said a sign at the armed police road block that barred the way to the Bataclan, “The French fight the stealers of life.”

Maman lowered her voice, speaking as softly as she could. “No sweetheart,” said Aude Blacher to her five-year-old daughter Hannah, “It wasn’t a bomb. Those are bullet holes.” Ms Blacher, 36, had taken her daughter to see the pockmarked glass in the door of the Salle à L’Etape bar, to help her understand what had happened at the end of the street where she goes to school.

A television journalist who had reported on the attack on the Bataclan concert hall 10 minutes’ walk away, Ms Blacher wore a pained expression. “It’s the second time I’ve had to explain to her about terrorism,” she said. In January the Charlie Hebdo attackers had struck close to Hannah’s former crèche.

And now a five-year-old girl was trying to comprehend how shots had been fired at the Salle à L’Etape; how the windows of the Casa Nostra bar opposite came to be peppered with bullet holes, beside tables and chairs still set with beer and wine glasses. And how, under the maple tree, outside the shattered frontage of the launderette on the corner, there was a circle marked in the ground, a page torn from a notebook, bearing the words: “Here a person died. Respect this place.”

Small wonder that Hannah was far from alone. In a vibrant quartier straddling the 10th and 11th arrondissements, the twenty- and thirtysomethings had spent the night of 14 November debating whether to go to their parties – some too frightened to leave their homes, others going because they needed to be among friends, to talk through the near misses: the bar they left 10 minutes early, the what ifs.

Come the following morning Morganne, 26, a paediatric nurse, was laying flowers outside the Casa Nostra, still shocked, still struggling to understand. She had been having dinner with a friend when she heard the sirens. Her friend, also a nurse, had been summoned to the Pompidou Hospital and spent Friday night trying to save the life of a woman of about 30, who had “been riddled with bullets”. At the hospital, said Morganne, they didn’t know the names of many victims. “So they wrote numbers on their foreheads.”

“France,” she said, “Will be terrified.”

And indeed, five minutes’ walk away at the foot of the Statue of the Republic itself, beneath the stone engraving of the word “Pax”, was a newer message: “For those who fell to the weapons of barbarians.” Further up the statue’s column, the slightly ragged “Je Suis Charlie” posters, not yet a year old, flapped gently in the breeze. And now a policeman guarded the entrance to the Metro, pistol in his holster, assault rifle in his hands.

But amid the shattered glass, the floral tributes and the fear, something else was stirring. It was there in the message taped to the pavement near little Hannah’s feet: “Together Against Hate.” And in the slogan on the other side of the road from the bar where young bands played their first gigs: “For joy, against extremism.”

The sun had come out on 14 November. Gentle autumnal light filtered through tree-lined boulevards, showing the French capital at its best. If the time had come for defiance, that did not mean anyone had to give up on Parisian style.

About 100 yards from the Bataclan road block, Ciro Christiano, head chef of Ober Mamma called together his white-aproned staff. Late on 13 November, they had heard the gunshots, turned out the lights, locked the doors and hid at the back of the restaurant, a total of 200 frightened people. Hiding for three hours.

On 13 November they had stayed shut. But now it was lunchtime the following day. They were opening. “The terrorists want us to be frightened,” Mr Christiano explained. “If we open now, we give people the impression that life continues, that we are not so afraid. This is our way of fighting terror.

“Yes, we have fear,” said Mr Christiano, “But we have courage too.”

So Vivien Bouffard, 42, and his son Maxime, nine, still went roller skating, even if they began with father explaining to son that whatever the attackers thought, they were not acting in the name of religion. And ended with Maxime lighting a candle at the foot of the Statue de la Republique. “Are we at war now?” said Mr Bouffard. “I don’t know. But we are not going to give in to fear. We are not going to submit to terror. We will carry on as before, use the Metro, visit bars, see friends. Otherwise the terrorists win.”

And so in the shadow of the Bataclan road block guarded by armed police, Jeanne Cochin, seven, emerged clutching a skipping rope. Her mother Anne, 44, had heard the sirens on Friday and kept her daughter cooped up in the apartment all Saturday. “I think there will be more attacks,” she said, “So yes I am a bit frightened.” But then came the shrug. “Even in war, life continues. People laugh, people eat.”