Commentary: Even After Paris, Fear Is No Match for Love
As I was standing in front of the football stadium HDI Arena in Hanover, there was suddenly an announcement over the speakers: "The football match Germany vs. the Netherlands has been canceled at the last minute. Please remain calm and go home immediately."
I looked around me, and there were no signs of panic in the faces of the other football fans – it was mainly disappointment. Like myself, most of them had come that night not only to witness a football match but to make a statement: in the wake of the terror attacks that hit Paris, we wanted to show the world that they we won’t let any threat harm us and our way of living. We still want to go out on Friday nights and have dinner and drinks in a nice café, we still want to watch football at the stadium, and we will continue to go to concerts, the opera and the theater.
With the cancellation of the football match, this opportunity to take a stand against terror was denied to us. As I made my way back to the hotel, I witnessed the heavily-armed anti-terror squad doing random checks on people carrying big bags, pulling over cars and urging the passersby to quickly walk on.
Back at the hotel, I immediately turned on the TV, and it was only then that I began to feel uneasy: there had been plans of several bombing attacks in the stadium and at other places in the city of Hanover. Residents were advised to stay at home. The sirens of the police cars were the sound I fell asleep to.
When I woke up again, it was a perfectly normal autumn day in Hanover. And yet, the occurrences of the night before still lingered over the city. At the same time, an anti-terror raid had taken place in Saint-Denis in France. The gunshots made me shiver.
Since I was scheduled to go back to Berlin only on the next day, I decided to go ahead with what I had planned – a small sightseeing tour. The normalcy – if not to say banality – of exploring Hanover on a bicycle felt extremely good, but whenever I was passing a public place with increased security, I couldn’t help but feel sad.
I live in Jakarta, and I am used to passing metal detectors and undergoing security checks whenever I want to enter a shopping mall or a hotel. Seeing the same thing in Germany is strange.
The next day, my train to Berlin was delayed for almost two hours. While I was waiting on the platform, only 10 meters away from where I was standing, people had spotted an ownerless black bag and informed authorities.
Within only a minute or so, there were at least five police officers on the platform. In the end, it was only false alarm, but I could still feel tension and fear in myself and the people around me. Back in Berlin, there wasn’t any difference to Hanover: increased security at the train station and the airport.
From Berlin, I took a flight with Turkish Airlines back to Jakarta on Saturday evening, and the first thing I read when I landed in Indonesia at Soekarno Hatta airport was that there had been a bomb threat on another Turkish Airlines flight from New York to Istanbul. Meanwhile, Brussels was -- and remains -- on lockdown.
I was glad when I reached home and my dog greeted me at the front door, happily wagging his tail because we hadn’t seen each other for seven days – compared to the madness that was last week, it instilled a sense of normalcy in me again.
The terror attacks in Paris have not only changed the French capital, but the whole of Europe. They hurt us deeply, as they have attacked our sense of freedom and independence and took away the lives of innocent people so randomly.
As my sister recently told me, she is almost afraid to turn on the TV or open the newspaper in the morning because every day, there seem to be more devastating news. It is quite easy to lose faith in humanity with everything that is happening in this crazy world but isn’t this exactly what the terrorists want?
Therefore, we must stand tall and strong, in unity – just as I was planning to do ahead of the football match in Hanover. When I travel to Germany again for Christmas, I will watch the last Bundesliga game of Hertha BSC live at the Olympiastadion before they go into the winter break. I usually dread going to the stadium in winter time simply because I can’t stand the cold – but this is about solidarity, compassion and my new motto: love over fear.
I know it sounds cheesy, but maybe it’s exactly what we need in these rather dark and gloomy days. It is as Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
Katrin Figge is a freelance journalist based in Jakarta. She published her first book on football this year, 'An Tagen wie diesen.'
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