“We were listening to some shooting and screaming, and when we thought it was over it was just the time the terrorists would reload their weapons and shoot again,” he said. At one point, bullets hit a wall he was squeezed against, and he felt it shake.
When the silence and strain became too much for someone in the cramped room, he recounted, the others would softly say “shhh” — to show “we were together, we were a unit, there was no one left alone.”
“When finally the emergency crew came to rescue us, we passed from that dark, tiny room to full light with a bloody battlefield . And policemen every five meters telling me ’don’t look at them, mister, they are dead, you cannot do anything,”’ he said. But “there were so many corpses I had to look where I put my feet.”
Today, the memories sometimes pierce his concentration when he is teaching, and he has to stop.
Survivor’s guilt is a problem for some. And many are still recovering from injuries.
Daniel Psenny was working from his apartment across from the Bataclan when he heard gunshots and saw panicked people escaping via the emergency exit and windows. He went down to help, pulled an injured American man into his building, reached to close the door — and was shot in the arm by an automatic rifle.
Psenny, a journalist for Le Monde, continues to undergo physical therapy after the shot burned his nerve endings. “I’ve lost part of the sensations and mobility in some fingers,” he said. “It’s a bit better than one year ago because I am on my feet and alive. But it’s quite tiring and heavy-going.”
“We are not like we were before. There is a ’before’ and an ’after’ November 13th, in the way of being, looking, seeing, even if, in my case, I continue going to a performance, to a movie, take flights, and get on with my life.”
