The first time I traveled to Paris, I stayed in a little dump of a hotel off the Canal St. Martin. The Place de la Republique and its environs became the first French playground for me and my new wife. When we retuned to the city five years later, it was the first place we visited even though our hotel that time was in a different part of town. I have magical memories of the park and the canal and all the avenues and little side streets leading into them. I can still remember every bar and restaurant we patronized, including the one that had been disappointingly and inexplicably converted into a Tex-Mex restaurant on our return visit.
I know other people have been directly impacted by these attacks. The assault on my memory is a small thing. And, yet, it saddens me.
On Sunday night, the sound of what may have been a firecracker, or a light fixture blowing a circuit breaker at a restaurant near the Place de la Republique, where a vigil was taking place, ignited an extraordinary panic. People stampeded out of restaurants, bars and stores across a two-mile-wide sector of the city as false warnings of gunshots erupted on Twitter. Some dived into news vans. Hotels turned off their lights as employees huddled behind chairs. One woman flung herself into the Canal St. Martin.
“Suddenly people were running and screaming everywhere, going in every direction,” said Omar Zahiri, a 50-year-old lawyer attending the vigil. “I said, ‘Stop running like a crazy person, calm down.’ But they didn’t. They kept running.”
I’d visit the Place de la Republique tomorrow if I could. I’d take my whole family there. It’s a wonderfully vibrant place. But, yeah, I’d have to be vigilant, and a firecracker might send me into survival mode. And that’s not the place I remember.
