Anxious summer as French look over shoulder

With every new terror attack, French citizens stoically declare that “life goes on”, but despite thisshowofdefiance,acreeping anxietyhastakenholdofsociety.

Outwardly, the French summer is in full swing, restaurant and bar terraces — targeted in a November attack on Paris — are packed and vibrant, beaches are covered with sunseekers and streets as busy as ever.

However beneath the surface,manyarefeelingthestrain after a string of terror attacks over the past 18 months.

“There is a cumulative effect. At first (a terror attack) is an unexpected event, but now we are in a situation where we fear it happening again,” said Evelyne Josse, a Belgium-based psychologist and trauma expert.

Users of a popular French online medical forum describe panic attacks on the metro, being paralyzed with fear at the prospect of taking trains to go on holiday or going to the beach, with one woman writing she feelsthatgoingoutinacrowdis like playing Russian roulette.

“Theanxietyisalwaysthere,” said 32-year-old Thibaut Chaize on his way to work in Paris.

“We are afraid but we can’t stop living,” he said. “The warinessisalwaysthere.Anystrange behavior on the metro or at a concert,allthatprovokesabitof fear.”

The cluster of terror strikes began in January 2015, when 17 people were killed in a spree of violence in Paris, including at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a Jewish store.

Then in November, when 130 people were killed at restaurants, bars and a concert hall in Paris, the reality of an everpresent danger began to set in, with government talking of “war”andcitizensgrowingused to the sight of soldiers on the streets.

In July, when a jihadist drove a massive truck into a crowd in Nice, crushing 84 to death, and a priest was murdered in a church in Normandy, it became clear that terror went beyond big cities.