#2.2: Not In Vain
The doors - locked. Metal shutters- closed. Lights - off.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion and at warp speed- all at once. Instant sobriety kicked in.
I needed to call home.
“Mom! Where’s dad?!,” I asked.
“Honey, why are you asking? How is Paris? Is everything okay?,” she replied.
“Turn on the TV,” I answered.
I spent the next several hours on and off the phone with my parents, hiding below the bar counter, strategically positioned by the back staircase, mapping out an escape route should we need it.
Never more fearful for my life or what was going to happen next.
Thoughts and images of previous mass shootings entered my mind - Virginia Tech 2007, DC Sniper 2002, Columbine 1999. But how is it possible that this is happening to me? What did I learn from the survivors of those shootings- in particular the VT shooting? Lay down. Play dead. Show no sign of life. If I couldn’t run, I decided that this was going to be my next best option.
The details of how much we knew and when we knew it, are foggy. You see, back home more accurate reporting of the situation was unfolding. But, in Paris, for fear of the terrorists gaining information to kill even more victims, the news was very filtered.
“It is just a lone wolf,” my dad kept telling me. Trying to keep me calm, all the while knowing that the truth was drastically and perilously different.
We didn’t know where the terrorists were going next. But, we did know that more locations, more victims were slowly being reported.
We sat in our hiding spot, feeling like sitting ducks. For hours on end. Not knowing if our pub would be next. Defenseless against terrorists with machine guns.
Wait, no - after spending hours on end in my war room, I knew that I did in fact have a weapon at the ready -- prayer. I prayed, I cried, and I prayed some more. I don’t think that I quite fully grasped the power of prayer until that moment. Until it was the only thing that I had left.
Hours later, in the middle of the night. The time had come. We had to run.
We ran. Hand-in-hand. On the cobblestone streets. In the dark night. The streets only lit up only by the night’s sky. Not knowing if one wrong turn would mean the end of our lives.
I actually don’t know how long we ran for, but it seemed liked forever.
We continued running, until we safely made it back to our flat.
With so much adrenaline and fear coursing throughout our bodies, sleep did not come easy.
I looked out of the window of our bedroom, and saw what I was waiting to return to all day- the iconic Eiffel Tower. Except it was not lit up at all like you see in the movies. It was dark. A symbol of mourning.
We would later learn that our pub was just blocks from the Bataclan theatre, where at approximately 9:40 PM, a mass shooting and hostage situation occurred.
The American band Eagles of Death Metal was playing to an audience of around 1,500 people. (Chris and his unique taste of music had actually been interested in attending the concert, but knew it wouldn’t be my scene.)
About an hour into the concert, a car pulled up outside the venue and three dark-clad men with assault rifles entered the hall. The initial attack lasted 20 minutes. The details of the attack are too grim to write.
The terrorists took the lives of 90 concert goers at the Bataclan that night. 130 people total lost their lives that treacherous evening and 413 more injured across the six distinct, organized attack locations.
It was nothing short of miraculous that I was able to get service from that pub to stay in contact with my family, that I was able to access a phone charger from a stranger to keep my phone from dying, that we were with a friend who could translate the French news headlines, that we were finally released from the pub without harm hours later in the dead of night, and that hand-in-hand we made it back safely to our flat covered in the prayers of our friends and family.
The weeks and months spent in my war room, leading up to our trip, praying protection and safety over our lives, was not in vain….
