{"id":7713,"date":"2015-11-17T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-11-17T17:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/diverse-paris-mourns-together-after-indiscriminate-violence\/"},"modified":"2018-08-16T04:36:16","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T11:36:16","slug":"diverse-paris-mourns-together-after-indiscriminate-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/diverse-paris-mourns-together-after-indiscriminate-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Diverse Paris mourns together after indiscriminate violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS \u2014<\/strong> Halima Saadi Ndiaye was celebrating her 36th birthday in a cafe where her brother worked when terror took over. Within a minute, she was dead. Within hours, her sister Hodda was, too. Her brother Khaled tried in vain to save them along with friends and other cafe patrons.<\/p>\n

The memory tortures him, along with worry about the future of his neighborhood, a place proud of its diversity and tolerance.<\/p>\n

French-born siblings with Tunisian roots and family in Senegal, the Saadis embody that ideal. After Friday\u2019s attacks by Islamic extremists, they now worry about a backlash against Muslims and other minorities, moderate or otherwise.<\/p>\n

The cafe\u2019s majority shareholder, Gregory Reibenberg, is Jewish, and a friend of Saadi\u2019s family. Reibenberg lost his wife in the attack, and he and Saadi marched together over the weekend in memory of their lost loved ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all inhabitants of this, people, and we need to fight for each other and help each other. There were black people, Arabs, Jews there. All of us were hit. So we are all in the same boat,\u201d said another brother, Abdallah, who flew in from Tunisia to join his family as soon as he heard about the attacks.<\/p>\n

The neighborhood is around the Canal Saint Martin, at the intersection of the 10th and 11th arrondissements. Narrow cobblestone streets intersect with grand tree-lined boulevards, with a cafe on every corner, many hosting live music, interspersed with kebab shops, eclectic groceries and hip boutiques. Young people crowd the neighborhood every night, drinking, smoking or playing music along the embankment.<\/p>\n

The attack took place around 9:30 p.m. Friday, on an exceptionally balmy night for November. The sidewalk cafe of La Belle Equipe was full.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were three birthdays, including my sister\u2019s,\u201d Khaled Saadi recounted, tears surfacing. Then, \u201cthey came and started shooting everyone inside and outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI lay on the ground on my stomach hoping to avoid the bullets,\u201d he continued. \u201cWhen I heard that there was no more shooting, I raised my head, but they started shooting again, so I hid again.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a minute that felt like eternity, the guns fell silent. He stood and found two of his sisters, along with friends and colleagues, in pools of blood.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first move was to look for my two sisters. So I found the first one, Halima Saadi. She died on the spot,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd my second sister Hodda, I tried to save her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI moved her with a friend of hers named Sam. We moved her to another restaurant nearby, and then we did the same for my other sister,\u201d he said. They talked to Hodda, who was barely breathing, and assured her they were there.<\/p>\n

Emergency services arrived within about 20 minutes but told him there was little hope. He later learned she died upon arrival at the hospital that treated some of the 350 people wounded in Friday\u2019s attacks.<\/p>\n

Halima and Hodda were among at least 129 people killed.<\/p>\n

The sisters were close, even though Halima had moved to Senegal with her husband and two children, 3 and 6. Hodda also owned a share in La Belle Equipe and was its manager, and the siblings often hung out there, sharing a glass or a meal.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they were beautiful,\u201d Saadi said.<\/p>\n

Reibenberg\u2019s wife died in his arms. He lost many friends that night, too, and is trying to keep the community united in grief.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was holding her hand. We couldn\u2019t revive her. We couldn\u2019t do anything more,\u201d he told France-2 television. \u201cShe asked me to take care of our daughter, and I promised I would.\u201d<\/p>\n

Portraits of his wife, Djamila, and Halima and Hodda Saadi hang on the window of the cafe, along with pictures of several other victims of France\u2019s worst attack in decades. Candles, flowers and notes adorn the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

Religious tensions have mounted in France in recent years. Islamic extremist attacks have repeatedly targeted Jews, and the far-right National Front has fomented suspicion of Muslims.<\/p>\n

The Saadi brothers don\u2019t want the attacks to scare people away from the neighborhood they love for its multicultural cohesion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who do this, they kill Muslims, they kill everyone,\u201d Abdallah Saadi said. He knew all too well the horrors his brother suffered: He lives in the Tunisian resort city of Sousse, shattered by an Islamic extremist attack in June that killed 38.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that the French people won\u2019t mix up everything,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are born in France. … We are just citizens as anyone else, loving our families and the people in general, and we lost two sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS \u2014 Halima Saadi Ndiaye was celebrating her 36th birthday in a cafe where her brother worked when terror took over. Within a minute, she was dead. Within hours, her sister Hodda was, too. Her brother Khaled tried in vain to save them along with friends and other cafe patrons. The memory tortures him, along […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":7714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7713"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}