A week after attack: I see I've never been so near a place of death

«Maman, maman!» almost whispers a teenage girl to her mother, a white rose in hand and in great need of encouragement and assurance of this being the right place to place her flower – amid the hundreds of other blossoms and toys and flags and T-shirts and the rest. 

Hiding behind her sunglasses, the lady asks her to wait a bit while she hands the other flowers to the other girls who are with her – a bit younger. I feel restrained to take a picture of them, as they bow to lay the flowers down.

On the beach nearby, not many people are around... on a Saturday, perhaps a dozen or two. A few feet above them, others are standing with heads hanged low, in mourning.  

Mere 216 hours ago, at mid-day, the picture may have been the same. Without the grief. A meeting place for life and death, for sadness and joy, for tourists and mourners now this Promenade des Anglais...

For me as a tourist and without flowers, entrance to the very area of the tragedy seems restricted. Not by rules of any kind, one just gets the feeling. Let this be for those touched the most.

Standing at the fence, how clear it becomes in my mind that never have I stood as near to any place of death. Right here, perhaps, there stood someone of the 84 who perished, or of the j202 who were left injured.

While many are the merry visitors around, from abroad and unable to relate, these eyes of mine do well up with tears just though I know what I was coming to see.

It feels so bad and so heavy to be here, almost physically so. Despite the thought I ought to be so grateful, obviously, that on my way to the theatre festival in Avignon I opted to take the flight via Paris, the idea to stop for a little while in Nice thus discarded...

With all the questions in my mind while on my way to this place – how well has Nice been restored in just nine days? What are the feelings in the people? How does one come out of this? The French intelligence chief warned about a civil war, how likely do you think it to be? And so on and so forth. I never asked them. I was not able to utter a word.

Here, on the Promenade des Anglais, silence fits best.  

Around this place, patrols fully armed seem a sight rather familiar. In my fife hours, I saw four such walking two by two. Always, a younger lad with this other obviously seasoned guy, tattoos speaking of many a mission.

A «new normal» in the shops and stores: one will have to show her purse and bags while near the Nicetoile department store, a security guard stands amid this pile of plastic bottles confiscated. At H&M, a Moslem lady has her baby carriage searched.

Headed to eat, I run into three black and white photographs, in A4 format, of the perished Estonian Rickard Kruusberg. Not about to dine after that.

What is it with this world of ours? How do we stop this? Back at the sea, it gets a little easier on the mind, somehow. A bigger wave comes around to splash me a little as I step into the water. Makes me smile.

The soothing effect of the sea. No wonder they come here... just to sit, and to be.