Paris Attack: Friday The 13th

- Francois Gautier

13 November 2015

As news flashes on my iPhone of the Bataclan massacre, I remember going there when I was very young. It was a cinema then, on Boulevard Voltaire, and we kids loved it, as it was built in the peculiar style of a Chinese pagoda. We used to make fun of the name ‘Ba Ta Clan’, until our parents told us that it was named after an opera of the much-loved French composer Jacques Offenbach. Today it has become a place for concerts, of course. And my first thought was for all my young nephews and nieces: Joachim, the son of my brother Pierre-Yves, who loves heavy metal music, Juliette, daughter of my cousin, Sofia, the anti-conformist, who is into theatre and music…

A quick call to my brother and my cousins: they are all safe. Relief floods all over me. It started at 9.20 pm with three suicide bombers blowing themselves up in France’s National Stadium. Were they trying to get at French President François Hollande, who was present? That would have been a major blow to our country. Then at 9.25 pm, two gunmen with AK-47 rifles riddled up with bullets Parisians sitting on the terrace of a popular café called Le Carillon. A few minutes later, gunmen opened fire on an Italian restaurant frequented by the young. At 9.36 pm, two other terrorists rained bullets on La Belle Equipe, a famous restaurant at the limit of 10th and 11th district. A little later, a lone gunman entered Le Petit Cambodge, a restaurant I have never heard of before, still in the 10th district, and opened fire indiscriminately, killing 14 people. The main attack happened at 9.40 when three jihadists, probably assisted by two other men—one a driver and the other a spotter—massacred more than 80 people at our childhood’s Ba Ta Clan, where the Eagles of Death group was playing.