We Will Raise Our Glasses High and Drink Them with Joy
We Will Raise Our Glasses High and Drink Them with Joy
Wine in Paris
Drinking on the terrace of a café is what I need to do.
I couldn’t envision not being outside this Saturday, November 14th. After incomprehension, tears, and anger, after being at work all morning, I could not imagine going home.
It was midday when I left the office of the news channel I work for in Paris. No one had slept the night before. It was all shock, anguish, and sadness. The sky was slightly gray and it was warm. People were out and a couple of children were playing in a park. The metro was open and I headed over to a friend’s house because there was no way I could be alone. Walking past the shops and cafés, past people eating and drinking on terraces, I saw that this country wasn’t completely fucked, that this would all end one day, that it would take time but that they hadn’t completely killed us.
My friends and I ate pizza in front of the news, and at 6pm we headed over to Place de la République to light candles. Then we went to our favorite bars and cafés in the 10th and 11th arrondissements, freshly scarred by the attacks.
I never thanked my Lebanese friends enough for transmitting to me their strength and their capacity to move past tragic events simply by meeting up in bars—often less crowded than usual—on post-attack evenings. In Beirut, my other ville de coeur, I learned to move on with life, whatever happens. And so on Saturday night, I also raised my glass to Beirut, bruised by Thursday’s attacks in a popular neighborhood of its southern suburb.
Drinking on a terrace is what we do best on Saturday nights. Drinking a pitcher of red wine at Prune on the banks of the Canal Saint-Martin was our own way of saying merde to all of this, that we were breathing, that we were alive. Despite the knot of sadness in my stomach and the leftover adrenaline from work, being outside with people is what felt right. A glass of wine and a cigarette in hand, we joked about creating our own hashtag, #OccupyTerrasse. We even managed to talk about sex and, just for a few instants, to turn this strange Saturday night into a normal Saturday night. Drinking on a terrace was pretty much a political act that day.
We raised our glasses high to Friday night’s victims, the “vile perverts” like us, who enjoyed rock concerts and drinking at cafés. We raised our glasses high to life, to laughter, to friends, and to the fact that Paris will always be a party, despite the pain and the tears. And we will continue to raise our glasses high and to drink them with joy, because we cannot lose face in front of these criminals.