One day Paris will feel like itself again

Shell- shocked faces, numb emotions, jangled nerves. Paris 2015 — and Washington and New York 2001.

Paris is a place on shaky ground, and it’s terrain residents of 9/ 11 cities know well. Watching the events unfold in the past week rekindled a haunting refrain uttered repeatedly 14 years ago in the USA: Will our city ever be the same?

It is hard to fathom in the raw moments of the day, but for Paris, like Washington and New York, the answer is yes.

Terrorism is not a newcomer to Paris and its neighboring communities. The year began with the horror of the assault on Charlie Hebdo and saw a beheading at a U. S.- owned factory and a brazen attack on a highspeed train. What makes the attacks Nov. 13 by Islamic State terrorists even more unnerving is that they were at venues packed with everyday residents — mostly the young — out to chatter and chill on a Friday night.

Three days after the attacks, the feed that raced across TV screens mesmerized. Spooked people were running from a memorial service at the Place de la Republique for the 130 who died. It would turn out to be a false alarm.

Fear and panic under such circumstances are normal, says Daniel Antonius, director of Forensic Psychiatry at the University at Buffalo. “There is a heightened sense of anything that resembles another attack,” says Antonius, author of The Political Psychology of Terrorism Fears. “It puts your mind into over- gear.”

Antonius has studied terrorism and was in New York during the city’s darkest moments on 9/ 11. He says there is an under- standable spike in mental health diagnoses and post- traumatic stress disorders for the first few weeks after a terrorist attack. The stress can manifest itself in different ways, such as people being afraid to be in a crowd or visit a cafe.

In New York, as in Washington, Antonius says, he watched as the city slowly found its center again, and people returned to restaurants, shows and shops.

“It happened after 9/ 11 and the London bombings” in 2005, he says. “Even though someone has gone through this trauma, most will return to normal pretty quickly,” often in two to four months, he says.

There are stages, Antonius says. First, fear of external threats and a sense of loss of control — and “an increased motivation for additional security.” Then there is anger or resentment and a feeling of regaining control. “That leads to resilience,” he says.

Three days after terrorists crashed a plane into the Pentagon in 2001 a few miles from my home, I walked across Key Bridge into Washington. It was a familiar path I had taken by foot, bike or bus countless times.

There had been undercurrents that the “next” terrorist target would be bridges, and I found myself rattled by an unsettling realization. I was scared. When I arrived breathlessly moments later in the Georgetown neighborhood where I eat, shop and unwind, I saw a Humvee positioned across the street from J. Crew, Clyde’s and other M Street fixtures I knew so well. What had happened to my city?

I would get together that evening with friends, and among the nervous talk and hugs came questions. Are we allowed to laugh? And when we heard echoes of a familiar tune, what about dancing? Will our neighborhoods, our lives ever be the same?

In the coming days, there would be other irrationalities: A co- worker who went tearing out of our skyscraper office building when she thought a plane had invaded closed airspace, canceled vacations because of flying fears, an overpowering desire to see the White House and make sure it was still standing.

It has been more than a decade since those fragile post- 9/ 11 days when our world was a jumble. Since then, Washington and New York have seen other threats, perceived and real. But routines resumed, we plowed forward, we felt normal again. The phrase “don’t let the terrorists win” became almost a punchline.

For the people of Paris, “I know they will be able to move on,” Antonius says. “They will come out stronger.”

Our post- 9/ 11 recovery should give the City of Light a flicker of hope. Someday soon, cafes will burst at the seams, and concert halls will rock. Someday soon, Paris will again feel like Paris.

There is an understandable spike in mental health diagnoses and post- traumatic stress disorders for the first few weeks after a terrorist attack.

JEFF J. MITCHELL, GETTY IMAGES Mourners gather in front of the Le Petit Cambodge and Le Carillon restaurants Nov. 14 in Paris after both places were targeted by terrorists.