American Bataclan victim, also at World Trade Center attack, describes Paris’s ‘9/11 moment’
Matthew Goff, an American shot in the thigh as terrorists killed 130 people throughout Paris last year, says he was one of the lucky ones.
The 37-year-old struggles with the horror of witnessing ISIS gunmen open fire at the Bataclan theater on Nov. 13, and remembers the confusion that spread through the concert venue as he scrambled towards an exit.
“I remember more screams, the smell of blood, but I also remember being insanely focused on getting out and things moving agonizingly slow,” he said.
After losing his glasses in a dive to the floor, Goff crawled his way to a door where he was rescued by French Le Monde journalist Daniel Psenny.
The attacks, which killed 90 people at the theater as well as dozens in bombings and shootings at cafes and the national soccer stadium, were the Kansas City native’s second brush with terrorism.
Psychological effects from the trauma have left some details of the Bataclan blurry, but he has vivid memories of being underneath the World Trade Center’s South Tower on September 11th, when he was in New York for work.
He remembers running through frantic crowds of people in the Financial District, and seeing money, purses, hats and other trinkets abandoned on the ground of lower Manhattan as he fled towards his Gramercy hotel.
Now Goff, who has been diagnosed with PTSD in the past year, is trying to heal along with a city that some say went through its own “9/11 moment.”
While the American notes key differences in the worlds in which the two attacks took place, he said he has seen the “soul of the city” in Paris the way he did as New Yorkers with a “f— you” attitude continued their lives while honoring the victims at World Trade.
“I really feel like overall New York and Paris, the U.S. and French, we have more in common than we would like to admit,” he told the Daily News from a cafe in central Paris.
The time since attacks has seen an outpouring of French patriotism, beginning in the immediate aftermath when millions of people around the world who changed their profile pictures to the French Tricolour flag.
It’s the same impulse that led to a proliferation of American flags in late 2001, with Walmart reportedly selling 116,000 flags on Sept. 11 and 250,000 on Sept. 12.
However, flags in Parisian windows represents new territory for the French, who have generally been more reticent on aggressively displaying their national symbol over concerns that it promotes the right-wing, an ideology now making deeper inroads in the country.
The more liberal, socialist-supporting residents of Paris have so far been largely immune to supporting her, but vocally anti-immigrant National Front leader Marine Le Pen is expected to advance to the runoff portion of France’s presidential election next year.
The Donald Trump supporter’s star has risen in part because of one of the differences between what followed Nov. 13 and 9/11.
September 11 was the beginning of a “new era” in American political life, whereas last year’s November bombings and shootings have been followed by continued attacks that Goff calls the “vicious cycle of reliving this thing.”
Seventeen people were killed in the Charlie Hebdo and Jewish grocery store attacks in January 2015, and the November killings were followed by a series of extremism-related stabbings, an airport bombing in nearby Brussels, the ISIS-claimed murder of an elderly priest and the slaughter of 86 people in a truck attack in Nice this July.
“After Nice, it was then we understood these attacks were closer to us. That it could hit anywhere,” said Eva Anselmi, an 18-year-old Parisian student from near the southern French city who took a photo of the Bataclan’s new facade on a recent weekend.
Anselmi said that the French people are not living in fear, though the threat of future attacks has left its mark on the country’s foundational values.
While the U.S. curtailed civil liberties with the PATRIOT Act, the heavily armed soldiers stand on certain street corners as France has remained under a state of emergency since after November attacks.
“Fifteen years ago you had a guy in a beret carrying baguettes walking his dog down the street. Now you have three dudes in berets with machine guns,” Goff said.
Under the emergency order, which currently expires at the end of January 2017, police can search homes without warrants and put people under house arrest.
With consistent reminders of the attacks, the French struggle, like the U.S. did, with how to remember the victims while trying to move forward.
Martine Cedle, 63, lives near the Bataclan and occasionally leaves a flower for those she saw gathering at the venue, which is now getting ready to reopen for the first time.
Sting will perform in a concert at the venue on Saturday, with proceeds going to the charities Life for Paris and 13 Novembre: Fraternite Verite.
“It’s good,” Cedle said of the plans for the anniversary. “But I hope in the future there will be no flowers, just young people and music.”
On Sunday the government will hold memorials at the six attack sites, though Goff said that dealing with the anniversary has been tough and he is not sure if he will attend.
He told the News that while physically he is stable, certain things trigger memories of the Bataclan just as certain reminders trigger memories of 9/11.
However, while Goff became interested in learning the details of what happened and the response at World Trade, he has tried to keep distance from the attack that wounded him.
He says that the Bataclan experience has made him reflective and appreciative of the things in his life: his family, life in Paris and the fact that he survived when scores of others didn’t.
“The moment they read through all the names and ages, I realized that I’m old,” he said of the first memorial event after the attacks. “So many younger than me died.”
Source:Â http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/american-bataclan-victim-describes-paris-9-11-moment-article-1.2869686
