My Magical Place

No need to sugarcoat. This is war.

I know it’s been a while now that this war has begun. In Syria, Palestine and every country where terrorists have erased all hope and life. When you are afraid of going outside your house because you’re afraid. When you decide to immigrate to a another country to give hope to your children. When living has become surviving. This is when war is declared.

I know that Paris is not the first. I know this has begun long ago, when radicals began to justify murder by naming God. But now it’s where I live. Now it’s where I breath, where I walk, where I grew up, where my family lives. Now it’s in my home.

It began in January 7th 2015, when cowards decided to shut the voice of the press. The Kouachi brothers murdered 12 people and injured 11, in the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a newspaper specialized in satirical cartoons. They were in the Al-Quaida branch and said that they killed them because they “dared to insult islam” by posting many funny cartoons about islamic people. Just because they chose to use humour against hate. Just because they were free to give their opinions. They were people with a voice. The next day, January 8th, an acomplice of the Kouachi Brothers, a man called Coulibaly, killed a policewoman. The next day, he went to a jewish convenient store in Vincennes and held the customers and workers hostage, where he killed 4 people and ended up being killed by the police. The Kouachi Brothers tried to escape but the police killed them in a raid.

The “free world”, thinking that Septembre 11th was far away, understood that it was no longer “their war” but ours. That, if Paris, the City of Light, could be hit, anyone could be. We finally understood what those families in Syria feel every single day. And it’s beyond terrifiying. It had to directly touch us for us to realize. It had to take lives for us to react.

At this point, after the events in January, us parisians, us french citizens, us europeans, us people in the world, us humans understood that it was going to happen all the time. We understood that our lives where no longer free. And it happened again in Paris, my City of Light.

According to the french newspaper Le Figaro, everything happened in 33 minutes. Around 9 pm (local hours), 3 terrorists blew themselves up next to le Stade de France, one of the biggest football stadium near Paris. 1 person died with the 3 terrorists. At the same time, a black car approched two cafés in the 10th arrondissement (discrit) in central Paris and fired at the people having dinner at the terrasse that night. 15 people died at the scene and many injured. When they were done, they got around the streets nearby and killed the people walking there. 5 killed in the Fontaine au roi street and 19 in the Charonne street. While people were trying to rescue one another, in le Bataclan, a famous concert hall, 1500 people were attending a rock concert and were taken hostage by 4 terrorists during 3 hours. By midnight, they had killed over 70 people and 200 were badly injured. As of today, Sunday 15th, 128 people died during the attacks or of their injuries. 8 terrorists killed themselves or were killed by the french Police task force, the GIGN.

Flowers and candles put in front of one of the cafés targeted.

They chose to go all around town, at random neighbourhood so they could kill the most amount of people. People who were having fun, rock and rolling in Bataclan; people having dinner at cafés; people watching a football game with our very own President Hollande attending. People who got up that morning of friday 13th, ate their breakfast, talked to their loved ones, made plans for a future they will never get to see. Innocent lives taken in the name of what ? God ? God would never accept a human killing another. It is never written in the Coran, the book of Islam, that you should kill people for God. In the Bible, it is said “never mention His name in vain”. How dare use God’s name to justify such atrocities ? How could a person, a human being, do that ? How can they put islam to such a shame, making people insult their own religion ? The real islam is not about hate. Islamic people of France are flooded with hatred comments. But please, do not put them in the same bag as the monsters who can kill people for nothing. We are all affected. We are one. It’s us against monsters.

The Eiffel Tower with no lights on, as a tribute for the innocent who died during the attacks.

All monuments around the world took the blue, white and red of the French flag in support

I am in shock. I am mourning my fellow parisians. I am crying for humans who, like me, enjoyed going to concerts, hanging out with friend, etc. It could have been me or my friends or my family. I hate the fact that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That it happened. But that will not stop us from living our lives. That won’t stop me from going to the cinemas or enjoying my life. The moment we stop living is the moment those monsters win. Barack Obama said today “It is an attack against the civilized world”. But we won’t fall against bullies.