Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday but one I have not celebrated for years. That day, I got up, got dressed, and went out. I went down into the metro, changed trains twice, and rode to the last stop of line 13, Saint-Denis Université.
The trains were crowded, as usual, especially on the line 13, where we travelled cheek-to-cheek. I looked around me, sizing up the other passengers, and noticed they were doing the same.
Since November 13th, we’re on edge when we’re trapped underground in trains or crowded corridors. Nearly every day, sometimes more than once a day, there are announcements on the information panels in every metro station: colis suspect, suspicious package, traffic slowed or stopped on one of the system’s 16 lines or on one of the several train routes that link the suburbs to the capital. So far, so good, no “suspicious package” has been anything more than that.
Yes, trains remain crowded because most of us have no choice. We cannot do without the metro to get to work. Yet there is definitely more traffic above ground. When I stand at the bus stop near my home, I watch the cars go by and, in many, notice a woman at the wheel, alone. On the Monday following the Friday the 13th attack, there were record traffic jams in and around Paris.
I’ve talked with my students about the “event” that has changed our lives, especially as the university where we work and study, Université Paris 8, is located in Saint-Denis, the town where the police tracked and killed three terrorists involved in the November 13th attacks. On November 18th, the day of the police raid on the terrorist hideout, the university was closed. The next day, we were all back at work.
As for my students, I am impressed by their courage and their ability to “be themselves.” In class, we talked and laughed. Some students spoke of their experiences. A young man was in attendance at the soccer match between the national teams of France and Germany on November 13th. He heard the explosions but, with all the other spectators, stayed till the end of the match. This same student had been at a concert at the Bataclan Theater the night before the attacks. Students emphasized this is a place where they like to go, underlining that, this time, terrorists targeted the young.
A young woman told us she went shopping in Paris the day the university was closed. While in a woman’s clothing boutique, she saw the police arrive and they told everyone to stay inside: another “colis suspect,” this one in the street outside the shop. True to the calm fortitude of all my students, she kept her cool and comforted others, more surprised than anything else by the reactions of the women around her: they cried, sobbed and made desperate phone calls to their families.
This young woman, French with family roots in Algeria, told us another story. During Algeria’s civil war in the 1990’s, with its official death toll of 150,000, civilians for the most part, her uncle set out to pay a visit to friends. When he knocked on their door, no one answered. He was expected, so he turned the knob and stepped inside to discover the entire family, husband, wife and children, dead in a pool of blood.
There are other stories like that in Yasmine’s family, which may help explain why she remained calm and provided comfort to others during the brief half-hour she spent as a prisoner of a clothing boutique.
If my students remain strong in the face of the great uncertainty facing us here in Paris (will there be another attack, where, when, who will be the victims?), it may be that they feel thankful to be alive, capable of enjoying life, simply getting on with it. As I look out at my class, I see young French men and women; at the same time I see the world.
I have students whose parents were born in Mali or Senegal, the Republic of the Congo or Cameroon, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Pakistan, India, Thailand or China; within Europe, in Croatia, Serbia or Macedonia, Portugal or Spain. Many are Muslim, a few are Jewish, there are evangelical Christians and Catholics, and also atheists and agnostics, of which there are many in France.
In recent weeks, US presidential candidate Donald Trump has called for closing down mosques and for creating national identity cards indicating a citizen’s religious affiliation (we all know who is being targeted here). Based on my students’ family names, I would say many of them are probably Muslim, but the students themselves are typical French young people, eager to learn and live life to the fullest.
Should they—or their American counterparts—be stigmatized for their religion? It is neither the French nor the American way.
Since November 13, 2015, France’s “Black Friday” (I’ll admit, I’ve always hated the name of that buying frenzy that immediately follows America’s only official holiday that resists being commercialized), France has been controlling its borders and encouraging other European countries to put in place stricter controls by the end of the year.
Some, such as Serbia and Macedonia, have taken the lead. As refugees continue to flow into Europe, those two countries are allowing only Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians to pass.
These past few days, I’ve been asking myself, “what about us?”—what about us Parisians? Who would take us in if we had to flee?
Perhaps we could turn to Lebanon. This multi-confessional country, where Christians, Muslims and some Jews live together, all be it with some difficulty, will have taken in almost 2 million Syrian refugees by the end of 2015, a third of its total population. For France, this would be the equivalent of 22 million, for the US, over 100 million!
This small country houses its refugees and does its best to place all refugee children in schools, where they share classrooms with Lebanese children. The generosity of its citizens, of all confessions, has been exemplary and we could all learn a lot from them.
For me, this year on Thanksgiving, there was no turkey, no stuffing, no pumpkin pie, but I’m thankful. I’m thankful for the religious freedom that exists in the France and the US. I’m thankful for the delicious fresh food and bread I eat every day. Mostly, I’m thankful to be alive.
