The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates
It has been exactly a decade since the attack by Islamic terrorists at the Bataclan theatre in Paris. Which in turn presaged a terrible year of Bastille Day truck carnage and Catholic priest decapitations. A few months later, Mark visited the square in Molenbeek, where the Bataclan perp, the so-called “most wanted man in Europe”, lived directly across from and in plain view of the Belgian police. Steyn took espresso and bakhlava at the family café in the square where the “most wanted man” took his own coffee, again in full view of the cops, most mornings.
“As I write, Paris is under curfew for the first time since the German occupation, and the death toll from the multiple attacks stands at 158, the vast majority of them slaughtered during a concert at the Bataclan theatre, a delightful bit of 19th century Chinoiserie on the boulevard Voltaire. The last time I was there, if memory serves, was to see Julie Pietri. I’m so bloody sick of these savages shooting and bombing and killing and blowing up everything I like - whether it’s the small Quebec town where my little girl’s favorite fondue restaurant is or my favorite hotel in Amman or the brave freespeecher who hosted me in Copenhagen ...or a music hall where I liked to go to hear a little jazz and pop and get away from the cares of the world for a couple of hours. But look at the photographs from Paris: there’s nowhere to get away from it; the barbarians who yell “Allahu Akbar!” are there waiting for you ...when you go to a soccer match, you go to a concert, you go for a drink on a Friday night. They’re there on the train... at the magazine office... in the Kosher supermarket... at the museum in Brussels... outside the barracks in Woolwich...”
Image: Alain ROBERT/Apercu/SIPA/AP