The last time we were in Paris, we stayed at the Hotel Claude Bernard on rue des Ecoles: on one corner a café, La Petite Périgourdine, and on the other side the Sorbonne, with throngs of young students. Early in our stay, after breakfast with our grown children at the café, I suggested a longish walk to the Marais district, where we could visit the Picasso Museum, inhale the calming harmony of the Place des Vosges, and enjoy one of my favorite restaurants from earlier visits, L’As du Fallafel, on the ancient rue des Rosiers.
Most streets in Paris have something interesting or beautiful to look at, and the long morning went smoothly by. But when we got to the restaurant it was packed, a line of customers stretching down the street. So were the other nearby restaurants, and after a while we started, a bit wearily, heading back toward the hotel.
We hadn’t gone too far before, walking along rue Saint-Antoine, a wide avenue (compared to the narrow lanes in the Marais), we passed a small restaurant called Au Bouquet Saint Paul. It wasn’t particularly distinguished, but we were hungry and thirsty, so we sat down and ordered. As the wines and bread arrived, Jeanne took a few bites of her salad, looked around, and announced, “This is the best salad I’ve ever had in my life!”
We laugh about that — but that’s exactly what Paris was to us. In large and small matters, Parisians seemed to be trying to live the good life, encouraging others to do so as well. In November, when the attacks occurred (some near the Marais), our hearts sank: this was going to be Paris’s 9/11 moment.
Why would any human being do such a thing? When our children were young, we took them all around the city, including the requisite visit to the Eiffel Tower, which was lit up after 11/13 with the blue, white and red of the French flag, the motto of Paris projected onto it: Fluctuat nec Mergitur (“Tossed by Waves but does not Sink”). We remembered the story of Jeanne’s salad. “I think they’re jealous,” she said and, at bottom, that seems right. No matter how you cut it, we have a lot, and they don’t.
Paris and New York are cities that are all about finding yourself, living the good life, eating and drinking well, accepting differences, encouraging freedom of all sorts, including sexual, political, and religious. Even San Bernardino poses a threat to the enemies of difference; it’s ethnically diverse and home to multiple consulates, including those of Guatemala and Mexico.
The jihadists are jealous.
Their religious fervor is a maguffin, a misleading idea sold to the maladjusted young. Some of them may believe that they’re serving Allah, shouting Allahu Akbar! as they blow themselves and others up, but they’re wrong — they don’t represent Islam, and the 72 virgins won’t be waiting, especially if the jihadists are in 72 pieces. Their brutality intends to terrify, but 9/11 and 12/2 didn’t ruin America, and 11/13 won’t ruin France. Today, the World Trade Center rises majestically over the New York skyline, crowds bustling around it as if the carnage had never happened.
Americans love to be scared by weirdo villains like Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lecter; we know there are psychopaths out there who actually want to murder us. We’ve got to beat them, but not let them change our behavior.
In Paris after the attacks, people gathered in bars and cafés, taking their time, talking, debating. Même pas peur, they’re saying: “You don’t scare me.” Such are the deep pleasures of freedom, as they have been and will be again.
Though for now…
—The quotes are the first stanza from “Il Pleure dans mon Coeur” by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). The drawing was done by Timothy Meinke when he was 8.
