Berlin, 2016. Strasbourg, 2018. What a strange sense of Déjà vu. The place: a Christmas market. The time: a few days before Christmas. The time: shortly before 20 o’clock, when it is already dark and the last of the mulled wine drinkers make their way home.
The alleged perpetrator: A criminal due become a young man to the authorities for a Long time because of his numerous crimes, and his sympathy for radical Islam, but remained free, because you are not allowed to lock up in a state of law that deserves its name, easy people, just because you are considered as a threat. The Ritual: The Whatsapp messages popping on the iPhone. “Everything’s okay with us. We are at home. Don’t you Worry.“ “I’m so sorry for your city. We are thinking of you.“
to be The same feeling, only a pawn in the game of fate: In Berlin, my son had just left the breitscheidplatz, where he was eating with his friends a crepe. In Strasbourg, my brother and his kids were gone on Saturday for a mulled wine at the Christmas market to drink, three days before the Drama. You have sent me even a Selfie, now has a macabre connotation. The daughter of a friend would be met by a hair of the perpetrator. A matter of three minutes. What if you had tied the shoelaces, or slower, would have gone to read a message?
the massacre could Have been prevented?
The same feeling of chaos, fear, horror, sadness, disbelief, confusion, anger. And, above all, the same questions: How to recognize the Moment in which a petty criminal radicalized, and to the fact passes? Would have been able to prevent the state or the police in the massacre? What will be the political consequences of this new attack? Yet more grist to the mill of the extreme Right?
Berlin is my home of choice. Strasbourg, my home town. I was in India, when I saw the pictures from breitscheid saw in the morning when you Wake up space. Since Tuesday night I’m in Berlin the images of the Strasbourg city centre around the Cathedral. They are very similar. The same wooden huts, the same light chains, which have lost their magic, the forces of law and order with the machine gun in the pedestrian street, the flickering candles were there, where the lifeless body of the victim.
In Berlin, I realized at the time, the carousel, where I was with my children often when they were small, looked at the Kudamm in shock. In Strasbourg, I know the butcher’s in the Rue des Orfèvres, the Corbeau bridge just around the corner with my parents. I can hear the Ringing of heavy bells of the Cathedral in the empty streets. The Rue des Orfèvres, and the Breitscheidplatz are today, the sad mirror image of each other.
We had forgotten in France, the attacks almost. Had started to live normally again, and had regained our insouciance. The promenade ends on Tuesday evening at the Strasbourg Christmas market, thought probably not to the Bataclan, Charlie Hebdo, in nice. The danger seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Soon we will forget again and need to learn. To be able to lead a normal life again. To not panic paralyze. To celebrate yet Christmas.
More about
stop in Strasbourg, the death toll rises to four
translated From the French by Odile Kennel.