At the stadium, the French and German national soccer teams were competing in front of a huge crowd. At the concert hall, an American rock band was playing. At a Cambodian restaurant, people were enjoying dinner. The streets were crowded and open with people of many races and tongues. There was color and light and noise and life in Paris. What an exquisite metaphor for modernity and civilization and pluralism. But then the bombs and bullets came, punctuated by those all-too-familiar words of savage piety: “Allah Akbar.”
Paris—and civilization—are under siege yet again.
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