When I woke up the other morning I saw the news of the terrorist attacks in Paris. Like most people, I was stunned, horrified. The headlines, the mounting death toll – some reported 120 dead, 150 dead, 180 – seemed like something out of a nightmare. Was I really awake?

My wife, in the next room, was still asleep. She had to go to work at Dolmabahce Palace in a little while, so I made coffee and went to wake her.

“Wha-at?” she asked, when I told her the news.

Just a couple of months ago, there was an attempted terrorist attack on Dolmabahçe. My wife even heard the gun shots. Fortunately, no one was killed. Now, with the Paris attacks, that day was brought back in alarming focus.

“Be careful,” I said, when she left to go to work.

She laughed resignedly, just as she did then. “Careful. What does that mean?” she said.

A little while later, I went to Kadıköy to get a haircut. At the barber shop, the TV was showing ongoing coverage of the Paris attacks. Turkish President Tayyıp Erdoğan was addressing the media. While Erdoğan condemned the terrorist attacks, he took the opportunity to remind his audience that Turkey had suffered many such attacks, including one at a peace demonstration in Ankara in October that killed more than 100 people.

The barbers seemed to share this broader perspective, for when I expressed my shock and outrage at the Paris attacks, they didn’t really say much. “Çok barbar!” I said, gesturing toward the TV. “How barbaric!”

They sort of nodded sympathetically, looked at each other, and continued cutting hair and listening to the news.

One of my high school friends and his wife were in Paris at the moment. On Facebook they had posted that they were safe at their hotel. I mentioned this to the barber Ali as he cut my hair.

“ Really? Your friend is there?” he asked, with genuine concern. “Is he OK?” Later, when I paid, Ali shook hands warmly, in a way as though someone close to me had just passed away.

###

Over the course of the day, I followed the news, as most people did. I saw lots of people, friends, colleagues, voicing their support for France, changing their Facebook profile pictures to the red, white and blue French flag. I did, too.

Others evoked “Casablanca.”

“We’ll always have Paris,” wrote a retired UPİ journalist.

Of course, those of us who have been to the City of Lights, it was a very emotional day. It’s true, as Hemingway famously observed. Paris is a moveable feast. If you have ever been there, then no matter where you go, it always stays with you.

I was there in the winter of 2008. A false spring covered the city in warm sunlight, so I was able to walk around each day as I pleased, from my hostel near the Boulevard Montparnasse all the way down to the Seine, past the Notre Dame and continuing on up to Montmartre. Everywhere you walked, it seemed, there were delicious aromas coming from the cafes and shops. The smell of baking bread and warm, melted butter linger even as I write this.

Then there were the evenings, when I would stroll along the Boulevard, past the famous Select, the Coupole and the other Lost Generation bars and cafes, sitting for an aperitif at the Rotonde and talking with a pleasant young man from Marseilles, and a girl from Poland who was studying art at a nearby college.

Looking back, I am conscious that my experiences, my memories of Paris, are far from original. There is always the touch of cliche lurking whenever you begin talking of the city, and especially writing about it. Nevertheless, there is a feeling, if you have been to Paris, that stays with you, as Hemingway observed. The city belongs to you, in a way.

###

As we continued following the news yesterday, as well as the social media, we began also to see other comments. Criticism began to emerge. Why was Paris so special? What about the attacks in Beirut just the day before? Or, as Turkish President Erdoğan pointed out in his speech, the attacks in places all over Turkey in recent years, from Suruc to Diyarbakir to Ankara? Why didn’t the world care when these attacks happened? Why, only after Paris, do people care all of a sudden?

My wife, to a certain extent, shared this opinion.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” she said, that evening when she returned home from work. We went for dinner and drinks in Kadıköy. “I mean, of course what happened in Paris was horrible. I’m not saying that it wasn’t. But many more people have been killed in terrorist attacks here in Turkey. For example, when the attacks happened in Ankara, you didn’t see people on Facebook changing their profile pictures to the Turkish flag!“

“I hear you,” I said. “You’re right. It doesn’t seem fair. But after all, it is Paris.”

My wife has also been to Paris, and we’ve shared our travel stories many times and, touch wood, we will go there together someday. Anyway, my point was not lost on her.

“I understand,” she said. “Paris is a famous city, but still …”

We talked about the issue for a while. We drew parallels to when celebrities die, how the whole world mourns, while every day thousands of normal people die and no one even notices their passing. Generally we tend to agree on most subjects, and don’t like to argue, especially about politics.

Instead, we tried looking ahead to our visit to America next month. We’re planning on spending a few days in New York, then heading over to visit my family in Pittsburgh for Christmas.

“Can you imagine the security?” my wife said. “Especially for us, coming from Turkey? It was already tight enough. After Paris, it’s only going to get worse.”

“I know,” I said.

###

This morning it’s Sunday, and my wife has gone to work again. In the news, the Paris attacks still dominate headlines all around the world. Here in Turkey, world leaders are meeting in Antalya for a G-20 summit, and of course the attacks are expected to be a tragic addition to an already crowded agenda that includes the ongoing civil war in Syria, just across the border, and the fight against Islamic. Erdoğan is scheduled also to have an hour-long chat with President Obama over Turkey’s role in dealing with these conflicts.

To a large extent, the shock has worn off. Perhaps, in this part of the world, we have just grown accustomed to such tragedies. There is the grim, hard certainty that what happened in Paris will happen again, somewhere and sometime soon. These are the times we live in, and this is the world we have made for ourselves, it seems.

And as long as the violence continues to rage, their will be more tragedy and death, and more politicizing of tragedy and death. And, from Paris to London, from Beirut to Diyarbakır, from New York to Istanbul, we will continue to wonder why.

###

James Tressler is a former Lost Coast resident. He is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul.