Blood on the streets of Paris

Normally there’s nowhere to eat out in Paris on Friday night: all restaurants, cafes and bars are filled with immaculately dressed, trendy Parisians and variegated tourists from all over the world, all relaxed and full of life.

Early Saturday, the tourists would wander toward major museums and iconic locations, amazed at the crowded beauty salons. An average Parisienne, having completed her morning toilet, would go the Boulevard de Clichy and Rochechouart at the foot of Montmartre along with her companion. Farmers' markets would be open there since dawn. Friendly and smiling farmers would sell fresh milk, hot bread, incredibly tiny heads of delicious molded cheese with cuttlefish ink and other unimaginable ingredients, sour cream, and huge juicy berries. Some Monsieur on a solo food-hunt would treat himself with a glass or two of young local wine, flirting with some old farmer’s comely daughter.

Tourists visiting the city for the first time, are oblivious of the fact that on Saturdays Paris, with all of its restaurants, boutiques, palaces and pastry, only lives until noon. Everything is closed in the afternoon, and almost all Parisians just chill for the rest of the day. Most of recommended locations from the tourist guide would open their doors to visitors, customers and clients only on Monday. That’s why the French are in so much hurry to get done with their business with the first Saturday sunrays.

Parisians very much appreciate their time. This feature might seem snobby to foreigners, but, in fact, behind each “Closed” label in broad daylight, so unusual for the Americans or Chinese, there is enormous and tender love of Parisians to their families and their homes. To dedicate their weekend to these treasured things is an undisputed must.

This tradition has become their philosophy. So it was, so it will be - and so it should be... In Paris...

... And the grisly Friday, 13, will never be able to change it. By ruthlessly killing dozens of innocent people (in a multinational, multicultural, tolerant France, the victims of the carnage are likely to be both Christians and Muslims, people of different origins and skin color), the bloodthirsty madmen –would never make Parisians, and the French, in general, different; whatever motive the murderers had. The great people of a great country that has seen tremendous victories and has got up back on their feet, after epic defeats over the past centuries, will not drown in these blood rivers, which the relaxed streets of Paris have turned into, at someone's inhuman whim.

To prove this, it took these beasts to kill over a hundred of people.

ISIS terrorists have already branded this atrocious Friday, November 13, a "9/11 French-Style." They are right. France has never experienced such an unexpected, undeserved and monstrous grief, neither had the U.S. until 2001. But the blood-craving murderers seem to have forgotten one thing.

They forgot about the fate of the person who inspired and organized the 9/11 attacks. No matter how long it would take, the French have an excellent memory, and they know the value of their tears.

France, nous sommes avec vous.

Mykhailo Gannytskyi is an Editor-in-Chief  at UNIAN