'People are here to be human again': Brussels residents gather to honor victims of terror attack
BRUSSELS — After a day of attacks that ravaged their city, residents of Brussels lit candles and drank wine in Bourse Square on Tuesday night. They talked with friends and complete strangers. Life will go on here.
But the city is very different from the one in which they woke up this morning. Many spent the day in their houses after the twin attacks at the city’s international airport and the central Maelbeek station left at least 31 dead and scores more injured.
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But as night fell, residents of Brussels gathered here, some scrawling messages of peace in the pavement with chalk, others singing as they lit candles.
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Guy Knapton and his wife Catharina have lived in Brussels for three decades and joined the crowds in the square Tuesday. Catharina would have been taking the metro through the area of Maelbeek around the time of the blast but she stayed home sick Tuesday. The pair said it was a blessing she was not injured, and felt they needed to come to Bourse Square to honor the victims.
"The least we can do is to come and put two candles in front of the cross here and honor them,” Knapton said. "They were just people doing harmless things, going on holidays, going to work.”
Knapton said that despite heightened security in the city in the months since the Paris attacks, people were in a state of shock that the violence had hit so close to home.
"I don’t see how anybody can be prepared for what has taken place here anywhere, not in Paris not in Madrid not in London," he said. "I don’t think the security gave us the impression it couldn’t happen, but we can’t accuse the Belgian authorities of not having been aware of the threat or not having taken any steps. What can they do?"
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“People are here to feel something — to be human again,” said 21-year-old resident Lente Leyssens. “I feel human again.”
Leyssens was on her way to her office, riding the metro away from the Maelbeek station when the blast struck. She said she saw smoke but didn’t know what happened until she got to her office. Leyssens joined friends in Bourse on Tuesday night.
The square was full of mostly young people like her and her friend Jeff Sermon, who said the attacks shocked him and scared him but he was determined to come to the square.
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Sermons said he was confident that the heightened security measures would keep people safe.
“This could happen anywhere,” he said. “I don’t blame the police. They can’t be everywhere at once.”
Four months ago, the people of Brussels filled squares in their city in solidarity with Paris, just three hours south by car. Now, it is their city that has been rattled as they gather to mourn.
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Megan Specia was Mashable's Assistant Real-Time News Editor and joined the team in September 2014. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism & Mass Communications from the University of New Hampshire after growing up in the Jersey 'burbs. She made her way to New York via a four year stopover in Dublin. Megan previously worked as a journalist and editor at Storyful in both Dublin and New York. Before all of that, though, her claim to fame was as head cake arranger and purveyor of all things sweet at Queen of Tarts cafe in Dublin, where she developed a serious addiction to macarons.
