Just after the attacks in Paris (75 - France)
Last week, I was in Paris where I lived 25 years.
This picture was made by my greatest friend Perrine le Querrec (who is a writer too), while I was walking on the rail green line in the 15th arrondissement of Paris.
It's a new place to discover where you can see a part of this district how you never seen it ! Many street artists made graffs, buildings are beautiful (see below) and it was a nice day.
On the rail green line, Paris 15
Flash and feed back
When the attacks of the last November 13 devastated Paris, I was in Nantes (44).
I’m a French novelist who likes to write thrilling stories. But, this time, during this bloody nightmare, the reality exceeded fiction. What could I write henceforth?
First, in the morning, I spoke with architecture students to give them some tips to write and cross the boundary between real and what is not real. At night, I was with friends spending happy hours. Then, and I still do not know why, around 3 :00, I watched TV. And I heard, and I saw, what the fanatic and murder madness destroyed my favorite Parisian district, where I lived for years.
One of the most liveliest and multicultural districts of Paris, where young and old meet them. Where foreigners settled for one or two generations and, as the Parisians said, many emigrants came from the French Province. I have no car, and there was no train, so I stayed in Nantes watching television until 9:00. Overwhelmed, and worried about my Parisian friends.
It was surreal to watch TV.
Surreal not to be in the 11e district, but sat on a sofa watching again and again the madness and horror modify our present. Our future. Ourselves. What can do a writer after that? I really did not know how to do in this bloody night. I could not even think. I spent a lot of time to read what people are saying about networks. Where do they find the words? So fast.
Some days later, I knew what could I do.
I didn’t forget this grisly September 11.
I was working in a big desk, everybody was on the phone. Suddenly, a girl shouted: it’s the war! And we saw the destruction of the Twin Towers. And we were stunned in a surreal soundless amazement. Who could have imagined that? Apart a writer of apocalyptic fiction. This day, the fiction was bitten by the reality. And we lost loving people; we lost words and voices to express pain, anger and stunning. Then, we lost freedom and our dream about a safe occidental life won painfully after the Second War World.
I love the American literature.
I read so many descriptions of New York, where I’ve never been, not yet, but I guess knowing so well thanks to writers and filmmakers. I kept in my memory depictions of New York – streets, districts, people, bodies and sounds, all the music of this amazing city. How long a city she needs to heal?
So I come back to Paris, walking on the streets and drinking to the cafe terrace. Speaking with everybody who just wanted to tell me how is he doing. And you know what : well or not, they do it, each day, they are in streets, in bars, together, even they still stunned, but still alive. Paris is still alive. Now, I can take the road around the world, I only wanted to see again this beautiful town before to leave it again.
On the rail green line in Paris 15
