Days of Sirens, Fear and Blood: ‘France Is Turned Upside Down’
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — It was a day of sirens, helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons and anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to safety. It was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror in and around Paris, one that ended with France unsure whether this drama is now truly over or a predictor of more cultural, religious and political violence to come. France has been profoundly shaken by the killings of famous cartoonists and editors on Wednesday in an act of violent religious extremism, followed by an extensive manhunt that could have been staged by Hollywood, and then the bloody denouement on Friday: Muslim extremists killed, hostages dead in a kosher market busy on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath, and others badly wounded. If this was France’s 9/11, as some said, the shock was that much greater for having come not at the hands of foreigners, but French citizens fluent in the language of Voltaire and Pascal. “We are all worried,” said Arnaud Delaytermoz, 32, a law student from Bordeaux who was in the subway near the market when he heard large explosions and came out to see what had happened. “It was going to happen one moment or another, in Paris, Bordeaux, anywhere.” The images could hardly have been more jarring, especially in a city with Paris’s history. When it became clear that the assailant at the kosher shop had chosen it to target Jews, Rue des Rosiers, a street known for its Jewish shops and restaurants — and for the deportation of its citizens during World War II — was shut down by the police. Near the airport, in an industrial park north of Paris, where two brothers sought in the killings at the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo were holed up with a hostage, it was a paramilitary scene. It concluded when the men, who the authorities said wanted to die as martyrs, charged out firing at the police. At the kosher market, which the police raided almost simultaneously, hostages fled the store while others lay dead near the gunman. Even with the immediate crisis having passed, it was a miserable day for a nation already buffeted by a stagnant economy, high unemployment, a weak president and a growing far-right movement that can easily exploit this latest display of homegrown Islamist extremism. There is a larger mood of defeatism in France, and anxiety about the strength of the French model and the structure of the government known as the Fifth Republic, made for a strong president but run for years now by men considered too small for the task. So as France grieves, it is also faced with profound questions about its future: How large is the radicalized part of the country’s Muslim population, the largest in Europe? How deep is the rift between France’s values of secularism, of individual, sexual and religious freedom, of freedom of the press and the freedom to shock, and a growing Muslim conservatism that rejects many of these values in the name of religion? And crucially, too, there are serious questions about the performance of the intelligence services and the government. In coming days, the government will be forced to confront whether more intelligence or better security might have thwarted the plot against Charlie Hebdo. “France is turned upside down,” said Luc Matti, an editor. “People are traumatized. There is a sort of unity between the republican left and the republican right,” he said, noting that President François Hollande has called for a unity rally this weekend. Yet Mr. Hollande, already deeply unpopular, is considered a weak president, and “in several weeks it will be like before,” Mr. Matti said. “The trend is bleak — there’s a real risk of civil war,” he said. “I’m convinced that if the Western world becomes majority Islamophobe, if there develops a fear and hatred of Islam, then our world and that of our children is heading in a bad direction.” Friday was a Paris different from the tourist boulevards and the “city of light,” a plunge into the world of the banlieues, the heavily immigrant suburbs that exist outside the ring road that acts like a moat for richer, whiter central Paris. The Parisians who gathered near the hostage drama at the kosher grocery, kept behind police lines at Saint Mandé in sight of the Eiffel Tower, were both captivated and concerned. Gloria Guttierrez, 39, lives nearby and works at a neighborhood synagogue. “We’re very shocked,” she said, “because this is France, which means liberty and fraternity, and today we don’t have that anymore.” “It’s becoming a dangerous country,” she added. “I don’t feel safe anymore.” The Muslim challenge felt real to her. “I hope things will change,” she said. “People shouldn’t cling to religion too much, because that leads to war.” Mr. Delaytermoz, the student from Bordeaux, said he was troubled by the sense of religious and cultural conflict, saying that he was shocked and “deeply moved” by the Charlie Hebdo attacks. France’s strong foreign and military policy, in particular its interventions in Mali and alongside the United States in Iraq, “probably influenced the crazy people who perpetrated these attacks,” he said. He hoped that the dire situation of France — these attacks, political divisions, the rise of the far-right National Front, the stagnant economy with high unemployment — would jolt the government. But he also praised its response to Wednesday’s killings. “They warned people,” he said. “They made sure people had the right information.” Mr. Delaytermoz said that whatever France’s current problems, on display this difficult day, he intended to remain hopeful for the future. “You mustn’t be defeatist,” he said. |