The past week has seen Strasbourg in grief. You can feel it in the streets, see it in people's faces and sense it as they tell you where they were when the attacks happened. It reminds me of 9/11, where I was and how it affected me but the difference is Strasbourg is tiny compared to New York, my neighborhood back home, Jamaica, Queens, has more inhabitants, to give you an idea.
It's the size of the city that makes a difference. I've been living here nine months and, even though it hasn't even been a year, I still run into someone nearly every time I go out, even in unlikely places. It's like a big town where it only takes two degrees of separation to know your connection. As a native New Yorker, it's a bit unsettling at first, I would crave anonymity but I've come to embrace it. It's this sense of community and how it's been shaken up is what is really jarring.
Tuesday night for me was any normal night. I went to work, taught my classes and was excited that I would be finished an hour earlier than usual. Armelle was going to have dinner ready and then I could watch Barcelona host Tottenham in the Champions League, a good night nice and toasty at home. After dinner, Armelle headed to her tertulia (a discussion in Spanish at the nearby Maison de l'Amerique Latine) and I began to look for streams online. Twenty minutes into the game and one spectacular Dembele goal later, I received a message on Messenger from my friend Morgane. She wrote, "Stay indoors tonight, don't go out or get inside if you can, there are police and emergency services all over the center". Honestly, I didn't think much of it, I thought it was either a joke or an exaggeration. It turned out to be neither.
That's when more and more messages started coming and that prompted me to do a quick Google search of Strasbourg on my phone. As I read about a shooting or shootings I got a phone call from Armelle. She was worried and wanted to make sure I was home and would not go out, though she was still at the tertulia with some friends. At this point, I also notified our couchsurfers to get indoors somewhere and avoid the center. No one really knew what happened or how bad it was, just that there'd been multiple shootings around the city center, near the cathedral and Place Kleber (our main square). Our couchsurfers came back and told us that the city was on lockdown, you could leave the center island but couldn't come back in. They got out on the wrong side and had to walk back along the perimeter. Later on, I went to go pick up Armelle and accompany her home from the tertulia, which was only a couple blocks away and had a chance to see how things were looking. Even though there were people outside the security checkpoints, there was tension in the air.
I forgot to mention, Strasbourg is famed for its Christmas market. People from around the world come to our little Alsatian town to walk along our streets & canals and drink vin chaud (mulled wine) while munching on bretzels (pretzels) and other Alsatian fare. So many people come that our population triples, the city center, already swarming with tourists on any given day, is brimming with them during this time. The center of Strasbourg is an island and so every bridge and entry point is cut off by security checkpoints, big concrete blocks funnel cars into a neat line and only residents can enter, semi's are parked across the road preventing car attacks like the ones seen in Berlin, Nice and Barcelona and security guards check your bags before letting you enter. As it's my first winter living here I have to pass these security checkpoints multiple times daily, seen the chinks in the armor and knew that something like this could happen because it really would be easy to bypass the security measures. For starters, these checkpoints are only active from 11 am to 8 pm, meaning if you wanted to avoid them you could just enter early or wait until 8. Secondly, the tram bypasses the measures and stops in the city center, meaning folks on the tram aren't screened. It seems like more of a show than a pragmatic approach to safeguarding our city and it worried me, to begin with.
The following day more news came in, the gunman was born and raised here, had lived most of his life here and had done a prison stint in Germany (where he was supposedly radicalized), in addition to a long, violent rap sheet. It was the kind of news that's baffling, how could someone that's from here shoot innocent passersby. He killed two people and severely injured several, as of the time of this writing 13 more were injured and there may be more deaths. He did this with a pistol, a six-shooter, from the 19th century, the kind of weapon collectors buy. After his rampage, he commandeered a taxi and headed back to his neighborhood of Neudorf in the south of Strasbourg, a stone's throw from the city center. His name was Cherif Chekatt and he will be remembered as Strasbourg's murderous son, the coward who pulled us out of our Christmas daydream and replaced it with this fever. This Tuesday our little, idyllic city was left battered and bruised but if there's something positive to come of it, it's that I hope people look at how the city has come together, how random strangers sheltered people in their homes during the attacks, how we're really all one, big community and how this isn't Islam, isn't Muslim, it has nothing to do with religion. The shooter was French, he was Strasbourgois, and he was a product of this country, something that should make us reflect on our society.
This Wednesday I took my bike to work, crossed the security checkpoint and began my meandering path through the center and over to Place du Corbeau. As I started down rue Sainte-Helene I noticed that the street was blocked off by police tape and by police standing watch. I had just passed down this same street the night before, apparently missing the attacks by an hour. And with that, it hit home. That could've been me lying on the ground in a pool of my own blood or lying unconscious on a hospital bed; wreaths, flowers and photos the only evidence of my passing. That could've been me ...
