Less than two weeks ago, I was hanging out at le Carillon, a bar in Paris’s tenth arrondissement and one of the scenes of Friday’s horrific attacks. It’s a well-known place, just down the road from my apartment in Belleville, and only a block from the Saint-Martin Canal, where young Parisians and bobos (hipsters) like to gather to drink wine and bullshit. I met some friends at the bar, and we sat at a table outside talking about politics.

My friends, most of them longtime militants, were not optimistic about the situation in France. They worried about the state of the French left (not good these days) and fretted about the prospect of the far-right National Front making big gains in the upcoming regional elections. At the table next to us, an older couple, who seemed to be regulars, were chain-smoking and chatting with the middle-aged bartender. Right across the street, Le Petit Cambodge, a popular Cambodian restaurant, was filling up with late-evening diners.

This past Friday I was with friends at another bar in Belleville when we first learned of the attacks that were devastating the city. As news began to filter in — of bombings at the Stade de France, mass shootings on the rue de Charonne, hostages at the Bataclan Theater — it dawned on us that most of the killing was happening just down the street.