PARIS — Noël has come to one of the world's most famous promenades, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
Twinkling stars adorn trees. Shops — from Guerlain to Tiffany & Co. — glitter with holiday decor. Parisians hawk hand-painted Eiffel Tower ornaments, mulled wine and cured meats as overhead speakers play “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” in French. Mixed in the festivities, however, are camouflaged soldiers with burgundy berets and high-powered guns.
It may be Christmas time, but the country remains in a state of emergency following violent attacks by the Islamic State three weeks ago. In other parts of city, memorials — not merriment — line Parisian avenues.
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From her apartment, Katherine Youngblood, a 25-year-old Alpharetta native who moved to a northern Paris suburb a year and a half ago with her French boyfriend, has a full view of the stadium where suicide bombers detonated explosive vests. The couple live in the same predominantly Muslim community where authorities later conducted raids in search of terrorists who killed 130 people.
But like many of the Georgians living in Paris interviewed for this story, Youngblood says the killings and chaos in no way make her want to flee the world’s most intoxicating city. It’s important, she and others say, to keep perspective. While the attacks were tragic and shocking, they point out that mass violence doesn’t occur as often in France as the United States.
“Tragedies happen in the U.S. every day. Mass shootings don’t really happen in Paris,” Youngblood says, seated on her purple sofa, her nearby Christmas tree sparkling.
Her comments come just hours before a married couple is said to have opened fire on a social services center in San Bernardino, Calif., last Wednesday, killing 14 people and wounding at least 21 more. The massacre, which is now being investigated as a possible act of terrorism, made headlines in Paris.
Mason Hicks, a 50-year-old former Atlantan, and his French wife moved their family here in 2009. The architect worked in one of the two Buckhead buildings terrorized by a day trader who shot and killed nine people on July 29, 1999. Hicks is shaken by the Paris attacks. But, he says, the situation back home is “pathetic.”
America far outpaces its French partner in homicide rates. France saw 777 homicides in 2013, a rate of about 1.2 per 100,000 people, according to statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. By comparison, the U.S. had 12,253 homicides that year, or 3.8 per 100,000.
While the Georgians contacted say they feel less vulnerable in France than they do in America, each had different takeaways about what the attacks in Paris mean for this city and their place in it.
It’s a heady time in this nation’s capital. France is at war, President Francois Hollande has announced. From the Bataclan theater and downtown cafes — and as far north as the Stade de France in Youngblood’s suburb of Saint-Denis — mounds of decaying roses, flickering candles and photos of young faces pay homage those murdered Nov. 13 in the name of the Islamic State.
As world leaders have come together in the city to conduct international climate talks, national leaders are grappling with how to balance an influx of refugees fleeing crisis in Syria with a desire for tighter border controls. Civil liberties, such as the right to assemble, have been banned for the time.
Still, the nouveaux Parisians seem to agree that life here is slowly returning to normal, even as they notice stepped-up security measures. They count higher numbers of police and military on the streets. They are aware of increased scrutiny of shoppers at retail centers. They note more drivers being asked to open the trunks of their cars before entering parking decks.
“People understand they’ll have to give up (some) of their liberties. After the attacks, I think it was fairly well understood,” says Claire Angelle, a French native who now lives in Atlanta and works as Mayor Kasim Reed’s international affairs director. She came back to her home country in recent weeks to visit with family and has remained through the climate summit with Reed.
She explains that yielding to government and military control is a change for the French, a people who pride themselves on liberty and their fiercely independent national identity.
“In France, we are chauvinistic and proud of our French culture,” Angelle says. “The police and Army have always been looked at with suspicion.”
Angelle believes those in uniform are now held in higher regard as the French adjust to a new reality.
Sara Tricarico, a 23-year-old Cumming native, says the horror of the killings have galvanized the French to come together in a way that makes her feel part of a broader community. She came to Paris only recently to work as an au pair, and says the reaction to the attacks strengthened her resolve to remain in the city she dreamed of as a child.
She loves her job, has made friends from around the world and is in the beginning of a relationship with a French boy. She has no intentions of returning home anytime soon.
“I know I’ve only been here four months, but it’s my town. I love it,” says Tricarico, a long-haired brunette who sips a café au lait on a patio. “I can’t imagine getting up and leaving after something that brought so many people together.”
Brandon Roddey — an ex-pat from Warner Robins who moved here several years ago to teach English — admits the recent violence has him thinking more deeply about his safety. He avoided public transportation for more than a week, he says. And he’s also heard grumblings from friends here that people are angry with the government for failing to tighten security following the January slaughter of several Charlie Hebdo journalists and a subsequent attack in a Kosher supermarket.
“You start wondering, who can you trust?” says Roddey, who now works at an oil and gas firm here. “It’s a big city, so you have to be on alert. But on an overall basis, people are more concerned about their security now than they were in the past.”
Roddey and many others, like Hicks, ponder the ramifications of the attacks on French politics.
France is holding regional elections on Sunday. Political tension here is high, and there’s concern that the violence will fuel support for the National Front, the far-right party that espouses anti-immigrant and nativist views.
“The political shift to the right is very much a force here,” says Hicks, a redhead who admits he misses Atlanta and homegrown favorites like Chick-fil-A. “The politics are not that different (than in America), fueled by racial and social issues.”
The men and others say the attacks have laid bare deep-seated hostility some of the French have toward many immigrants. The so-called outsiders, particularly those from North African countries, have been relegated to the fringes of Paris for decades, and effectively to the fringes of French society.
It’s an issue to which Erin Koval, who moved here from Roswell in 2008, is particularly attuned. The 30-year-old is in graduate school here and teaches French and other languages to immigrant children, some of whom came here as unaccompanied minors, she says. She’s concerned that decades of lack of inclusion and integration has exacerbated feelings of resentment and isolation.
“There’s a huge gap. It’s ‘us’ and ‘them,’” Koval says of the attitude toward groups of immigrants, a label used even for second and third generation children of foreigners.
While she feels included in French society as an American citizen, she recognizes that’s not a universal feeling for all immigrants. She loves France, she says, but, “I wish it would stop being an elitist culture and embrace its multi-culturalism.”
Just moments later, as Koval speaks with an American journalist near the Bataclan memorial, a middle-aged white man with a quilted coat and Nike sneakers approaches. “We speak French in France,” he admonishes, in his native tongue.
When Koval asks him why he is hostile, the man grumbles a curt response. A stunned Koval translates for a reporter. “He said, ‘Because we don’t like you.’”
This isn’t the Paris she’s known, she says. “I’ve never had anything like that happen to me.”
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