50 people rush down the little staircase. Some crack and start crying. Others swallow their beer in one stroke. An impression of the end of the world reigns in the room. An image suddenly comes to my mind: the Second World War and people hiding in cellars in Paris during the bombings; the fear they must have felt.

My friend finds me – her fiancé is in front of the bar. He has come to take us home. We walk up the stairs from the cellar, and right before we leave, the waiter says something that will haunt me: "Girls, if you leave, we will not open up to let you back in."

The door of the bar opens on to a city we do not know anymore. In these streets that I know by heart, in these streets I have travelled to go to college, to have a drink, in these streets that have known the joys and romance of my twenties, there is nothing but terror.

Terror is this silence in the middle of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where normally the party is in full swing on a Friday night. Terror is the people who run to go home. No one walks. Everyone runs. I run too, and I laugh at the same time because the situation is too absurd. I laugh, and tears run down my face, for I am afraid. I am afraid for my life. I am afraid for those who are dead. I am afraid for Paris.

"Not even scared" was the most popular slogan in the streets the day after the attacks. This is not true. After that night, with each blow of horn a little too pressed, with each carelessly forgotten bag in the subway, we fear.

Right now, the terrorists have won.

They terrorised Paris. They shot her youth. People of my age all know at least one person who lost a loved one in the attacks, if not worse.

I have a recurring nightmare, where men with guns in their hands walk towards me. I know they're coming, but I'm glued to a chair and I cannot move. They point their weapons on my face and I have time to be certain that I'm going to die before I wake up.

The country is rife with hostility now, the divisions are bitter. And on the eve of the presidential elections, political extremism has swept into breaches of hatred with record success.

Terrorists have won, but only for a time. Once we have healed, we will fight bigotry and hatred with unity and freedom.