A life saved, a friend LOST
This is an excerpt from Marco Chown Oved’s observations Tuesday at the Café des Anges in Paris. The complete column is on
MUCH HAS ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT
the heroism of Ludovic Boumbas, who, when the shooting started, threw himself in front of a friend to save her. That friend was Chloé Clement, who was hit but survived. The petite blond arrived at the café Tuesday afternoon in an oversized black coat and big sunglasses. While she had been released from hospital, she still appeared to be shattered. “I came to pay homage to Ludovic,” she said, slightly bent over, as if she was carrying the weight of her friends’ deaths. “Without him I wouldn’t be alive.” It was the worst interview I’ve ever conducted. She was so weak, so unmistakably traumatized, that I couldn’t bring myself to ask tough questions, or any questions at all. “I’m so very sorry for your loss, for the horrible things that happened,” I stammered as she broke down crying. I was unsure how to react, so I did the only thing I could think of: I gave her a hug. It’s not very French to hug a stranger, but she hugged me back and sobbed.
A short walk from the public mourning in Place de la Republique and the bouquets at each shooting site is a café that doesn’t appear to have any connection to Friday’s terrorist attacks.
But if you go past the round tables lined up along the sidewalk and through the blue French doors on the corner, it becomes clear the Café des Anges is a living memorial to its victims.
Five current and former employees as well as six regular customers were killed at La Belle Équipe, an establishment so intertwined with this one that they traded staff back and forth.
More than two dozen friends had gathered there on the fateful evening to celebrate waitress Houda Saadi’s 35th birthday. They were sitting on the terrace and bore the brunt of the assault when it came. Many are still in hospital. Eleven didn’t make it. Among the dead are Hodda and her older sister, Hamila, 36, bartender Lacrimioava (Lacri) Pop and her partner Ciprian Calciu, waitress Michelli Gil Jaimez, 27, former bartender Guillaume Le Dramp, 33, and regulars Ludovic Boumbas, René Bichon and Hyacinthe Koma.
“Just thinking about it brings back images, very graphic images,” said Café des Anges’s manager, Virgile Grunberg.
One invitee showed up late and found police tape and carnage where the party was supposed to be. A pair of brothers dragged their dying sisters from the chaos and desperately performed CPR as they waited for help to arrive.
Grunberg and his staff put on brave faces as the lunchtime rush arrived. They poured coffee, cleared tables and hauled cases of wine up from the basement, all while stopping to chat with those who came by to pay their respects and greeting regulars with a hug instead of the customary bisous.
“We are all very close, the staff, the customers,” Grunberg said. “This is a neighbourhood café. People come every day and they tend to spend a lot of time here. We’re all part of each other’s lives.”
Axel, a bartender, put it more succinctly: “We’re family.”
Only a few hundred metres away, La Belle Équipe was like a set of close cousins. Grunberg knew the team so well that when they opened, he took a month off to help them get rolling.
On Tuesday, he handed out candy in honour of Pop, his popular bartender, who was such a fan of sweets that at least one client every day came with a piece of gum or a lollipop for her. When he slid a gummy to one woman, she broke down in tears, and Grunberg bent his lanky frame all the way over the bar to give her a kiss and a rub on the shoulder.
“It’s all going very fast. Yesterday, everyone wanted to have a memorial to the victims, talk about them and pay their respects. Now we are in a phase where we want to talk about problems with the authorities,” Grunberg said.
Pop’s daughter, who was about 10 years old, had only just arrived from Romania, he said.
Others who perished had partners who aren’t on their leases and could be evicted.
“We managed to get a small amount of money for them, but it’s not enough for the long term,” Grunberg said. “We’ve asked the prime minister to meet with us to see if anything can be done. We’ll see.”
The victims were multicultural millennials, typical of the cosmopolitan 11th arrondissement. Pop and Calciu were from Romania, Jaimez had moved to Paris from Mexico. Boumbas was Congolese and Koma had roots in Burkina Faso. The Saadi sisters were second-generation Tunisians.
“This whole area is like that. The café is like that,” Grunberg said. “We have always had people that come from everywhere, from every country, every religion. Christians, Muslims, Orthodox, everyone.”
Much has already been written about the heroism of Boumbas, who, when the shooting started, threw himself in front of a friend to save her.
That friend was Chloé Clement, who was hit but survived.
The petite blond arrived at the café Tuesday afternoon in an oversized black coat and big sunglasses. While she had been released from hospital, she still appeared to be shattered.
“I came to pay homage to Ludovic,” she said, slightly bent over, as if she was carrying the weight of her friends’ deaths. “Without him I wouldn’t be alive.”
It was the worst interview I’ve ever conducted.
She was so weak, so unmistakably traumatized, that I couldn’t bring myself to ask tough questions, or any questions at all.
“I’m so very sorry for your loss, for the horrible things that happened,” I stammered as she broke down crying.
I was unsure how to react, so I did the only thing I could think of: I gave her a hug.
It’s not very French to hug a stranger, but she hugged me back and sobbed.