Khaled Saadi was working at La Belle Equipe restaurant, where his sister was celebrating her birthday, when his family and his life were shattered.
Gunmen stormed the Paris cafe, first aiming at those enjoying a balmy Friday night at the sidewalk tables, then spraying the interior.
“There were three birthdays including my sister’s one. So the terrace was crowded,” Saadi told The Associated Press. “And at half past nine, I was inside, they came and started shooting on everyone inside and outside on the terrace.”
“They killed everybody. My two sisters, my friends and my sister’s friends that were there.”
Khaled hit the ground. After a minute that felt like an eternity, the guns fell silent.
He stood, and found two of his sisters, friends and colleagues in pools of blood.
His 35-year-old sister Halima died on the spot.
His other sister, 36-year-old Hodda was severely wounded and barely breathing, and Saadi did everything he could to try to save her, but in vain.
“I moved her with a friend of hers named Sam. We moved her to another restaurant nearby and then I left to get my other sister,” Khaled explained. “I left with the same person towards the restaurant. And then I left Sam with Hodda so he could talk with her and keep her awake and tell her that we were there because she was still breathing.”
She died upon arrival at a Paris hospital treating some of the at least 350 people wounded in Friday’s attacks.
Halima and Hodda were among at least 129 people killed.
Hodda was the manager of ‘La Belle Equipe’ and her sister Halima was on a one week visit to Paris before heading back to Dakar, Senegal where she lived.
Khaled Saadi is tortured by memories of the night, thinking of all the people he couldn’t save, and why he survived but his sisters didn’t.
He took the reservations for three birthday parties the cafe was hosting that night.
A French-born Muslim of Tunisian origin, Khaled Saadi and his brother Abdallah worry about a backlash against moderates like them.
“The people that do this, they kill Muslims, they kill everyone. Our sisters are gone, and 128 persons together with them. So many people are wounded,” Abdallah said. “I hope that the French people won’t mix up everything. We are born in France, in Bourgogne precisely, we have always worked, unlike what some stupid people may think. We are just citizens as anyone else, loving our families and the people in general and we lost two sisters.”
“My parents are in an absolute distress. We were eight brothers and sisters and we became six, in one evening.”
They lament the attack on a Paris neighborhood that embodied the idea of living together in diversity, saying attackers targeted everyone indiscriminately.
“We are all inhabitants of this planet and we need to fight one for the other and help each other,” Abdallah continued.
“There were black people, Arabic people, Jewish people there, all of us were hit. So we are all in the same boat.”
Cafe owner Gregory Reibenberg is Jewish, and a friend to Khaled Saadi and his deceased sisters.
Reibenberg also lost his wife and the mother of his daughter in the attack.
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