A Year Later, Paris Remembers

On Nov. 13, 2015, Paris saw the music, food, sport, and revelry of a normal Friday night dissolve into screams, suicide bombs, gunfire, terror, and a staggering amount of death as Islamic State terrorists targeted various locations in the City of Light: Cafes, a soccer stadium, a concert hall. On Sunday, Paris remembered the attacks of a year ago and honored the 130 victims, reports the AP, by reading out their names, unveiling plaques, attempting some semblance of normalcy. "We've got two important things to do tonight," said Sting on Saturday night, during a concert he gave to reopen the Bataclan, the music venue where 90 people died in a sustained assault. "First, to remember and honor those who lost their lives in the attacks a year ago ... and to celebrate the life and the music of this historic venue. ... We shall not forget them."

But even as the French honored their dead, the living acknowledged their scars. "I will always live with the fact that I saw ringing cellphones that said 'Papa,' 'Maman,' on the dead," the commander of the Paris Fire Brigade, who responded at the Bataclan, tells the New York Times, as part of the paper's interviews with several dozen survivors. "But the parents, they will have to live with the lasting loss of their loved ones." Adds a man who was wounded: "I remember I was lying down, and I saw someone in white. For that reason, I thought it was an angel." She wasn't an angel, but rather the only doctor on the scene—and she gave tourniquets made of napkins. Meanwhile, the Washington Post takes a look at Europe's extremism a year after the attacks, and concludes that it hasn't improved. (More Paris terror attacks stories.)