It has been billed as Paris’s rock gig of the year and sold out in minutes. But the soldiers and armed police standing guard and the psychologists on hand to support traumatised fans mean it will be a gig like no other.
The Eagles of Death Metal, the California rock band who were on stage at the Bataclan concert hall when gunmen burst in and killed 90 people in the worst of November’s Paris terrorist attacks, will come back on Tuesday to resume their performance that was so tragically interrupted. With the band’s vocalist, Jesse Hughes, promising that “not returning to finish our set was never an option”, they will play at Paris’s Olympia concert hall before resuming their European tour.
But as the Paris gig approaches, survivors of the Bataclan massacre, who have been given free invitations, are steeling themselves for the emotional challenges of returning to see the band play. For many, it is a crucial step to rebuilding their shattered bodies and lives. Others, who have not felt able to listen to the band’s music or go to a concert since, fear it might be too soon.
Three months on from the Paris attacks that killed 130 and injured 350, about 40 people are still in hospital undergoing operations. More than 1,000 people have received state psychological support. Many have severe and life-changing injuries after being shot by Kalashnikovs at close range – some have lost limbs, some can no longer walk, one concert-goer, who has now emerged from a coma, lost his tongue and eye after a bullet entered his neck and exploded out of his jaw.
Even those who escaped with no physical injuries carry mental scars and say the return to the everyday often feels like walking through the city as a ghost.
“I’ve got a ticket but I’m not sure I’ll feel able to go to the gig,” said Alex, 26, a communications worker who lay still for an hour and a half among corpses in the Bataclan’s pit as the gunmen shot people around him and he listened to the “cries and agony” thinking he would be next. He is considered one of the Bataclan’s “miraculous” escapees, emerging with “barely a blood stain on my clothes”. But that status has brought with it an intense sadness, guilt and disorientation. With friends he sometimes feels like a “phantom – present but absent”. Gripped with regret about sternly telling a trembling woman on the floor near him to be quiet and not move, he later tracked her down and found out she was only 15.
“Everyone feels differently and it’s very personal, but for me, I fear the concert might be too soon,” he said.
Alex — who did not want his surname disclosed — hasn’t felt able to listen to an Eagles of Death Metal song since the attack. “At first, I couldn’t listen to any music at all. Eventually I turned away from rock to classical or calm electronica. Even if a colleague at work was listening to rock on headphones, I had to go into another room to get away from it.”
Nor has he been able to go the cinema — “too confined, dark and loud” — he avoids pavement cafes, always looks for the emergency exit where he is and can no longer wear headphones on the metro because he feels he has to remain hypervigilant at all times. “I study everyone in case they’re a threat. If the train brakes brusquely or the lights go out, I go into survival mode.”
After the attacks, Alex wrote two harrowing blogposts about his experience that were widely read. In one he said he felt he couldn’t see the band again “even if they offered me a private concert in the presidential bunker”. But he’s open to changing his mind as the date approaches. He might put on the clothes he was wearing the night of the attack, which are washed but otherwise untouched. “If I do go, it will be a key moment, but it won’t be a moment of pleasure,” he said.
Lydia, 27, survived the Bataclan attack with a slight leg wound from the stampede of people trying to get out. Her friend was shot but survived after the bullet lodged between her lungs and ribs.
But Lydia, a Parisian who had lived in England for five years, lost her job in a London bar after the attack. “My boss told me I needed to move on and stop thinking about it, that I needed to smile again,” she said. “I feel like I’m between life and death. It’s really hard. No human being should have to see death and carry it with you for the rest of your life. All these images, screams, sounds, smells keep coming back.”
She will definitely go to the concert. “I always knew I had to finish the gig. I need to replace that night with something better — better mental images, better energy. The last time I saw the band it was as they were running off stage. I need to see them playing again to know that the attacks are finally over,” she said.
Life For Paris, an association for survivors, rescuers and victims’ families, which was formed last month after beginning as a Facebook group, will be working with the venue to ensure the best conditions for survivors coming to the gig.
Georges Salines, a Paris doctor, lost his daughter Lola, 28, in the Bataclan attack. He now heads another group for families and victims, 13 November 2015: Fraternity and Truth, which has petitioned for better handling of attacks after he and others were left searching for their missing children for days after delays and poor information. One family was directed to sit and hold vigil beside a dead young woman but learned much later it had been the wrong body.
Salines is going to the Eagles of Death Metal gig. “I want it to be a rock concert where you can dance and have fun, and which marks a return to normal life,” he said. “I think it’s a good idea the band is coming back. I don’t go to mass, so I’m going to a rock gig.”
