Paris Slowly Coming to Terms With a New

Vulnerability
By STEVEN ERLANGERNOV. 27, 2015

Memorials left at the monument in the Place de la Rpublique in Paris after the
Nov. 13 attacks. Credit Pierre Terdjman for The New York Times

PARIS Two weeks after the Nov. 13 attacks here, many of the memorials around the
monument in the Place de la Rpublique are bedraggled, the hand-drawn signs rain-soaked,
the candles exhausted, the flowers dropping their petals.
On the plinth, which bears a 31-foot bronze statue of Marianne, the embodiment of the
French Republic, there are even more tattered posters that read, Je suis Charlie, remnants
of the solidarity after the January attacks in which Islamist extremists struck the satirical
weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket.
The assaults two weeks ago, however, were different random killings of 130 people at a
concert, outside a soccer game and on the terraces of cafes and clubs. While the authorities

at first flooded the streets with police officers and soldiers to reassure the public, they are
less visible now, with more infrequent patrols of tourist spots and transport hubs. Security
guards at some stores still inspect customers bags and ask them to open their coats, but that
scrutiny appears to be fading, too.
But as Paris memorialized the dead on Friday in a solemn ceremony, it remained a city in
shock ttanise, as the French say. The Champs-lyses, with its magnificent Christmas
illuminations and the Cartier store looking like a massive present with a bright red ribbon
of lights, is unusually empty. Tourists have canceled their trips, and locals have rushed to
get home, away from another potential target.

Though tributes to the victims of the Nov. 13 attacks have begun to erode at
sites like the Place de la Rpublique, many in France are still coming to terms
with the fact that the terrorist strikes might not be the last. Credit Pierre
Terdjman for The New York Times

Paris is only slowly coming to terms with the idea that this assault by Islamic State
supporters, many of them French-born, is unlikely to be the last.

Bouchra Wagner, 45, owns two market stands with her husband at the March des Enfants
Rouges, near the Bataclan concert hall that was one of the attackers targets. Born in
Casablanca, she has been in France for more than 20 years.
We are all in mourning, she said. It has become part of our daily life; we are living with
it now.
Another attack could occur, she said, whenever, wherever.
Bruno de Frias, 30, was at Le Carillon bar with his girlfriend and two friends when the
terrorists started shooting and escaped through the kitchen. Everyone is telling me to see a
psychologist, but I just dont have time, he said. But its deep in here, he added, pointing
to his middle, and the memories come back like flashes.

Few people strolled the Christmas market at the Champs-lyses in Paris. The
French capital is only slowly coming to terms with the idea that this assault by
Islamic State supporters, many of them French-born, is unlikely to be the last.
Credit Pierre Terdjman for The New York Times

People are afraid, Mr. de Frias said. It makes me feel worried about the city.

A florist, he said he has been selling tons of white roses for those who want to remember
the dead of the Bataclan massacre by placing tributes at the foot of Marianne. Now, he said,
weve started to see more and more people buying flowers for gifts.
Its good, it means Parisians are going out again, he added. I think we all want to move
on.
A small older woman hovered near the statue of Marianne, fumbling with her umbrella and
her purse. She brought a candle to honor the dead, but it was too wet that day, she said, so
she would come back later.
I came also to pay respect to the victims of 1939-44, she said. The victims of the
Holocaust are the same, casualties of the same kind of hatred. Her name, she said, is
France Cohen, and she is 78; her father, who was Jewish, was deported during World War II
and she reunited with her parents only after the war.

The recent violence is a reminder of the bloody history of Paris the Revolution, the
Commune, the German occupations, the bombings around the Algerian war and later. Paris
may be, for many, the dream of a sweet, bourgeois life, with elegant aesthetics and fine
food, but beyond the patterned cobblestones, it is also a city that has had long experience
with enduring trauma.
There is another Paris, too, the Paris of the banlieues, the poor, heavily immigrant suburbs,
many of them mostly Muslim and black. Clichy-sous-Bois, where the deaths of teenagers
fleeing the police set off nationwide rioting 10 years ago, remains one of the poorest towns
in France, with unemployment around 40 percent and half the population under 25.
Only 10 miles from central Paris, there is still no major road or mass transit station despite
a decade of promises, and it usually takes 90 minutes to commute each way. In the 10
months since the Charlie Hebdo attacks, when Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the
situation in places like Clichy territorial, social, ethnic apartheid, there has been some
new investment.
A tram line connecting Clichy to the main suburban railway at Aulnay-sous-Bois is finally
under construction, scheduled to open by the winter of 2018, according to the mayor,
Olivier Klein, with a subway stop planned for 2023. Some redevelopment has occurred,
with old housing projects ripped down for newer construction. Security is also better, said
an older Algerian-born man playing cards, who declined to provide his name. The police
are more visible and make more rounds.

Cabra Yakici, who works in Les Bruyres cafe in the center of Clichy-sous-Bois,
said that young people are afraid to go into Paris. Credit Pierre Terdjman for
The New York Times

In the last two weeks, there has been a heavy police presence in Clichy, with more patrols
and more random stops, or controls, to check identification papers. Were controlled
everywhere now, said Madalin Silagyi, 22, Romanian-born but in France for a decade. In
the stations, in the streets, especially the youth.
Some Muslims and blacks say they feel safer here than in Paris. It is in the city where they
are the subject of skeptical looks and police stops.
Paris is more afraid, Mr. Silagyi said. Theyd never attack us here, he said about
terrorists. They want to hit the French population. Here there are not a lot of French, like
in Paris. Here there are Arabs and blacks.
Of course, many of the people here are French-born, but do not feel French in the same
way as they imagine a white Roman Catholic does. They feel cart, or rejected. Osama
Ouriemchi, 37, said, Its worse than after Charlie Hebdo because these attacks give such
a bad image to the religion, such a false image, and now in Paris they look at all of us
with suspicion, in the shops, on the metro.

France held an official commemoration on Friday at the Invalides monument to pay tribute
to the 130 victims of the Paris attacks.
Publish Date November 27, 2015. Photo by Pierre Terdjman for The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video

Cabra Yakici, 27, who works in Les Bruyres cafe in the center of Clichy-sous-Bois, said
that young people are afraid to go into Paris. He was born here, but his mother is
Moroccan. In Clichy, he said, We feel at home, we feel more secure here, because if
something happens, its going to happen there.
The suburbs are poor, Mr. Yakici said. But what I like is the respect people show one
another and they help one another. This is something we dont see in Paris.
Outside the nearby Caf Bni Snassen Angad, named after a mountain range in Morocco,
young men in black athletic clothing were smoking marijuana and hanging out. Asked
about the attacks in Paris, Mahdi, 21, born in France to Moroccan parents, said, Its a
Zionist plot. Why? Ive seen these videos that prove it, he said, declining to provide his
last name. Its the Zionists and its all about money.

His friends all agreed.

Another video, he said, proved that Mohammed Merah, who in 2012 killed Muslim French
soldiers and then Jews in Toulouse in the name of Al Qaeda, really had blue eyes and was
not a Muslim at all. They pretend that Muslims are the terrorists, but its not what religion
is about, Mahdi said. We as Muslims are always humiliated.
Adi Camara, 25, whose parents are from Mali, nodded. He has been out of work for three
months and is looking, but I feel targeted in Paris, he said. As a Muslim, a black, its all
the same.
He added with a sigh, Its complicated in France.
Back in Paris proper, Geoffrey Cromier, 44, a hairdresser, is the president of the
storekeepers association of Rue de Bretagne, in the Marais. He has lost half his clients
tourists, he said, who canceled their trips here. Parisians will recover and go back to their
daily habits, he said. But the tourists? Im afraid a substantial part of them will disappear,
at least through Christmas and the New Year.
Ms. Wagner, the Moroccan-born market-stand owner, said that her business has been hit by
the loss of tourism, which will be slow to come back. But lets put things into
perspective, she said. Were alive.