After Paris Attacks, Ties That Bind Patrons at a Cafe Also Burn
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/world/europe/after-paris-attacks-ties-that-bind-patrons-at-a-cafe-also-burn.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
PARIS La Belle Équipe, where 19 people died during this months terrorist attacks, means the beautiful team, and those who frequented the corner bistro in the bourgeois bohemian 11th Arrondissement say the name is all too fitting.
Its owner, Grégory Reibenberg, is Jewish and was married to a woman of Algerian Muslim descent, Djamila Houd, 41, a bright and bubbly receptionist at a fashion house. She died in his arms on the night of the attacks after several men armed with assault rifles sprayed the cafes terrace with bullets.
Nearly two weeks after the Nov. 13 attacks, which left 130 dead, the multicultural band of friends and colleagues who spent their time at La Belle Équipe are trying to rebuild their lives. But it is a wrenching task made all the more difficult by the fact that so many of the victims were intimately connected.
Despite its oversize place in the global imagination, Paris is not a very big city, but a walkable patchwork of often cozy neighborhoods with distinct identities. Here in the 11th Arrondissement, home to a left-leaning and urbane population of artists, actors, writers and students, the corner bistro as in the rest of the city serves as a salon for debate or wine-fueled conversation. It is a refuge away from home to meet friends, people-watch or tame loneliness. It is also a place where the waiters know your name, your favorite dish or preferred aperitif and double as confessors and confidants.