Mohamed Taha—a Paris-based Syrian activist who has been railing against the Islamic State and Bashar al-Assad, and who was beaten for it in 2011—was having dinner near the Bataclan, the venue that was attacked on Friday. It was an assault right on the heart of Paris, on its diverse youth, that left at least 129 dead and at least 300 more wounded. In the video below, Maclean’s foreign correspondent Michael Petrou talks to Taha about what he saw as he shows us the supportive (and sometimes not-so-supportive) scrawlings at the Place de la Republique, which has become the beating heart of a city in mourning.
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