1.
Because there was nothing else to do, I said to myself, I will read Hemingway and drink wine and think only of Paris. So I sat that afternoon and read A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's memoir of life in Paris, and drank wine and thought of Paris. It was 7th of July, 2005.
2.
I remember my few days in Paris as a student. I stayed in a really bad motel and it was a disappointment. The more irritable my host became, the more mad I responded. But that's how it was. Still, puny moods and attitudes were no match for Paris. I walked along the Seine. I roamed the boulevards. I looked at
paintings and old buildings, loafed in cafés. I went in and out of
shops along the rue St-Dominique, buying nothing. I ate fruit and croissants and dipped them in my coffee -- I only drink coffee in Paris. A gypsy girl begged me to
let her draw my portrait.
3.
The city, of course, is older than Christianity. It's older, in fact, that morality. That's why so many people make love in France. You can be a pagan, and no one will blink an eye. While I remember little else of Paris, I remember this. Paris is a large city, teeming with masses of so many different people.
4.
I remember the French newspaper Le Monde ran an article titled nous sommes tous Américains, we are all Americans, following the 11th of September, 2001, attacks.
5.
Yesterday, I caught the news again. Did you know that Paris was attacked today? How can anyone hate Paris?
How could anybody wish it harm? What is the point of being a man if
somewhere in this world a man like me, my flesh and blood, could hate
the city of Paris and wish it harm?
6.
Such, it seems, are the questions we continue to ask. In New York. In London. In Paris.
7.
St Geneviève, pray for us. For the city you love was under siege today.
Teach us to pray for our cities and for peace in our times. Teach us to
pray for the best thing that this world can ever give: A carefree street
where a mother need not feel afraid. Teach us, if it is possible, to
pray also for our enemies, to reach out bloodied hands to seek and find
their human faces. Do not forsake us, holy Geneviève, though we are so
far God, so far from one another.
8.
We are all Parisans. Whether we are Muslims or Christians or pagans. Because the violence of the world is the violence of our own hearts. Teach me to pray, St Geneviève, for those who would do us harm.