Parisians rally to cafes and bars to defy Isis after terror attacks

Parisians have rallied for a night of the eating and drinking they are famous for, in defiance of the jihadis who gunned down Friday night revellers last week.

Social media reverberated with the slogan “Je suis en terrasse” on Tuesday, an echo of January’s “Je suis Charlie” movement and a reflection of how the slaughter at cafes, a music venue and a football stadium hit the younger and more fun-loving residents of the French capital.

Many of the 129 victims of the attacks were having drinks or eating at restaurants and cafe terraces in eastern Paris when militants opened fire.

“What was targeted was our way of life, our city’s identity and culture, the happiness of living together,” the Monsieur Bleu restaurant said in a statement, calling on Parisians to go out for a meal and observe a minute of silence at 9pm local time.

The Fooding restaurant guide also called on French people to go out to restaurants, bars, cafes and brasseries to pay tribute to the victims, but also to help cafe owners who fear a drop in business following the attacks. “Peace for Paris, tous au bistrot,” it urged.

“We told each other if we don’t sit at the terrace today, we probably won’t do it again,” Marie-Therese Vasseur, 65, told Reuters from her vantage point in the spitting rain under a canopy at the Cafe Zephyr in the Grands Boulevards theatre district. “We can’t just stop living.”

The cafe’s manager, Fabien Mazars, welcomed the initiative, saying his takings last weekend had been less than a third of the usual, and that he was braced for a slow couple of weeks.

Well-known cultural institutions, including the Paris Opera, reopened on Tuesday after shutting following the attacks.

Some saw “Je suis en terrasse” (I am on the cafe terrace) as the best way to defy Islamic State (Isis), the militant group which has claimed the attack and sees western ways as decadent.

“We are going to mourn our dead ... but tomorrow, we will kiss each other like the abominable perverts we are,” journalist Luc Vaillant said in a column published in the left-wing newspaper Libération.