Connect the Dots 101

The trauma of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris was highlighted in testimony by survivors and others at a trial of 20 men accused of involvement.

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One by one, day after day, week after week, a steady stream of witnesses walked up to the stand.

They fiddled with their face masks or shuffled notes. Adjusted the microphone, some with trembling hands. Stared at the ceiling of the brand-new, brightly lit courtroom to steel themselves or hold back a tear.

“The court is listening,” the presiding judge, wearing red robes lined with speckled white ermine, would say.

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The hushed courtroom listened to gut-churning recollections of the shootings and suicide bombings — carried out by Islamic State extremists at the national soccer stadium, on restaurant and cafe terraces, and at the Bataclan concert hall — and to heart-wrenching accounts of lives that were shattered.

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“We were ordinary people,” said Arthur Dénouveaux, the president of Life for Paris, a Nov. 13 victims group. “We want to be ordinary people again.”

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One of the most striking accounts came from Aurélie Silvestre, who told the court that she had become an “athlete of grief.” When her husband was killed at the Bataclan, she was pregnant with their daughter.

Reading from notes with poise, through gold-rimmed glasses, Ms. Silvestre said that the girl, now 5, struggles to understand the sadness that sometimes grips their family.

“She thinks that after death we all meet again, so she waits,” Ms. Silvestre said. “Sometimes, I hear her whisper ‘Papa’ in her room.”

www.nytimes.com/2021/11/13/world/europe/france-2015-attacks-trial-victims.html