Pub nights provide solace for Paris attacks survivors

On a weekday night in a pub in the French capital, a group prop up the bar with beers in hand to share their experiences of the terror attacks that rocked Paris on November 13.
The survivors gather regularly for a drink after meeting on Facebook -- and say the get-togethers have become a lifeline because only people who were there can really understand.
"Where were you?" "How did you get out?" "Did you lose anyone?" are just some of the questions that participants in the "therapeutic aperitif" ask.
Most of those nursing drinks were at the Bataclan theatre when jihadist gunmen burst in, spraying concert-goers with bullets. Others were enjoying a drink on a terrasse or watching France play Germany in a football friendly at the Stade de France.

All are survivors of the attacks or relatives of victims, who were driven to seek out and share their experiences with others who narrowly escaped death on that mild autumn night.
For many of them, Life For Paris, a private Facebook page for the survivors and their loved ones has become an essential part of life.

What binds its more than 400 members, who are required to supply a concert ticket, medical certificate or other proof of their connection to the attacks to gain admittance, is that they "all went through hell that night", says 27-year-old ambulance driver Cedric Rey.

Cedric was at the Bataclan Cafe, in front of the concert hall, when the three jihadists who eventually killed 90 people stormed the venue.
For the past two months he has been haunted by the "stupid voice on the cop's answering system" that answered his distress call.
He is also stalked by the memory of a pregnant woman with thick glasses who walked past him just as one of the gunmen cocked his rifle and pointed it in his direction. "That woman took the bullets for me," he told AFP.
For days after the killings, he kept returning, numbed, to the scene of the attacks with 19-year-old fellow survivor, Nahomy Beuchet.

"The first week, we went together to the Bataclan every night from 7:00 pm to 5:00 am. We lit candles, hung around and talked with the cops on duty. We were lost, we were like zombies," he says.
Nahomy says she "felt alone" before stumbling across the Life For Paris group.
On meeting other survivors, her first question is to know where they were positioned in the Bataclan when the shooting started.
Meeting up with other people that also bore witness to the bloodshed is a help, "if only just to retrace chronologically what happened".