Ten years on, France bears the scars of the November 13 attacks

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By Elissa Darwish

PARIS (Reuters) -Sebastien Lascoux was absorbed in the music when three Islamist militants burst into the Bataclan concert hall in Paris and opened fire on the crowd, killing 90 people including one of his friends.

A decade on, he is still haunted by everything he saw and heard that night of November 13, 2015. He can’t go to crowded places or enclosed spaces, even cinemas. Loud noises remind him of gunshots.

“I had to relearn how to interpret all the sounds around me – the noises of the street, any sudden sound that makes you jump,” he said.

“A part of me died that night and stayed in the Bataclan.”

‘WOUNDED CITY’

The assault on the concert hall was the deadliest of a burst of coordinated attacks on the French capital that night which killed a total of 130 people and traumatized an entire nation.

Layla Gharnouti and her sister Myriam, a nurse, were at their mother’s flat about 200 metres from the Bataclan.

They heard people screaming and running in the street, opened their front door and took dozens in. One of the people they rescued was Lascoux.

The family turned the flat into a makeshift infirmary and treated wounds with whisky – they had no disinfectant to hand.

“The apartment smelled like blood,” said Myriam, now 46. She still lives in Paris, which she sees as a “wounded city”.

But Layla had to go. She moved to Brittany. The memories in Paris were too difficult.

“After everything that happened, the only thing I could hear was sirens, even from far away. It’s like being constantly on alert,” the 55-year-old shopkeeper said.

She also has trouble going out. “In an enclosed space, I’ll look for where the emergency exits are … In a restaurant, I don’t like sitting with my back to the window. I prefer to face the window and see outside.”

SECURITY, MEMORIES PERSIST

Then-President François Hollande called the attacks an “act of war” and declared a nationwide state of emergency that allowed faster investigations and searches without warrants. Around 10,000 soldiers were deployed to sensitive areas including train stations and places of worship.

Over time – after other Islamist attacks, including a truck rampage in 2016 in Nice and the 2020 beheading of a schoolteacher – those temporary measures got embedded into law.

“The French have internalized the idea that the threat is permanent,” Alexandre Papaemmanuel, a defence and security expert at Sciences Po Paris, said. People have got used to seeing soldiers patrolling, he added.

Memories of November 13, 2015 are so persistent and vivid because it all hits so close to home, said Denis Peschanski, a historian at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, who has studied the aftermath of the attacks.

“Anyone could have been a victim, either because they were old enough to be there themselves, or … because they were old enough to have children who could have been there,” he said.

Every year there is another commemoration, bringing the events back into focus. Layla and Myriam Gharnouti will be joining this week’s tenth anniversary events, as will Lascoux.

The 46-year-old podcaster will be remembering his friend, who was shot while trying to shield another member of their party from the gunfire.

“I used to go to a lot of concerts with my friends. The theatre and the cinema were places I loved. But ten years later, I don’t know if I’ll ever go back.”

(Reporting by Elissa Darwish; Additional reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro; Editing by Ingrid Melander and Andrew Heavens)