This is first a matter of migration: Several waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th century—first from France, Italy, and Portugal, and then from Morocco, the Congo Republic, and Algeria—have shaped the population. It is secondly a matter of structure, since Brussels and the Capital Region stand apart by design from the other parts of Belgium, which is a federal constitutional monarchy. (Yes, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy).

Finally, it is that Brussels is defined by its international aspirations. Educated and professional European people like me have come to study and live and work around the various European institutions based here. Europe may still be just an idea elsewhere, but it is a reality here—with the consulting firms, the NGOs, lobbyists, and those who work in branches of the European Union itself. Those who come here to network and pursue internships (as I did) were committed to the international idea of Europe, and wanted to make a life and career that was explicitly European.

But European ideals and identity have long been under pressure. And to be in Brussels has started to mean feeling under attack—even before the terrorist attacks on the airport and the Metro last month.

As the economic crisis and the European dogma of austerity kicked in at the end of the last decade, the Brussels’ vibe changed. Daily life here started to be punctuated by a sense of emergency, expressed through visible and endless European summits. Those summits also occasioned more protests in Brussels—protests against austerity, against the big proposed trade deal between Europe and the United States. Right here in Brussels you could see the gap between Europe and its citizens widening as the protests went on and on. I could feel the European Union coming apart here before it got noticed elsewhere.

This unhappy reality has slowly crowded out the things I’ve loved about Brussels. This city had a special magic that came with being so international and yet so small, at human-scale. It’s hard to feel lost in Brussels—the buildings are not so tall, the distances not so far. It was a nice little melting pot of people from very different places living closely together.

I first felt in love with the place when I was a child and came here every summer to visit some of my parents’ friends. My memories of those times are full of comics like Tintin or the cowboy Lucky Luke. I remember the only statue that does not seem boring to kids: the Manneken Pis´–and the flower carpets that are created on the Grand Place in august.

Later, when I returned to Brussels as a young adult student, my appreciation deepened. I discovered the numerous festivals, exhibitions, bars, concerts, cultural events, and beers of Brussels. I loved the place’s multiculturalism—go to a bar and you will hear at least 10 different languages being spoken. No one is a stranger in Brussels because everybody is! The hardest kind of person to meet here is someone from Brussels (or a Brusseleir).

The recession and austerity didn’t end that, but it diminished the space and time for exchange. Then the menace and danger arrived last year. The first tension arrived with news of the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, on January 7, 2015. Ever since then, military personnel have been deployed in front of the European Institution buildings.

A deeper feeling of insecurity in Brussels started with the attacks last November in Paris. The alert level was then raised to the maximum (level 4) and military people started filling Brussels’ roads and squares. For the first time in my life, I saw tanks and military personnel in my city. For the first few days after the Paris attacks, Brussels turned into a ghost town—a city I didn’t recognize. The bars, the restaurants and the theaters where deserted.

Daily life started to change in little ways. People started to go to work by car rather than taking public transportation. Patrols by the police became so frequent that they were seen as reassuring, and eventually normal. Every two days we could hear new police raids in Brussels’ neighborhoods. Our lives seemed newly connected to the news, the latest information about the potential French and Belgium cells working with ISIS.

The conversation was strange. There was an overload of information about threats, and Brussels seemed somehow less European. We spoke more of the impact of violence and danger on our lifestyle, and less about the fact that the perpetrators had come from here, from our international city. Indeed, the authors of the attacks were almost always presented as strangers and not as children of our European society. They were described as marginal people and we did not try to understand their actions. The Brussels I loved had seemed so committed to understanding different people, of different backgrounds and languages!

I found myself wishing for more conversation. I thought we should ask ourselves about the lack of hope in the European future and the growing dissatisfaction with European politicians. I wanted to know how people and civil society could play a role in defining our common future. How could young Europeans leave behind everything they have here, in the capital of Europe, and adopt an ISIS message, rather than building their own future with us?

All of the changes last year established a feeling of being under threat. There was a collective sense that something bad was going to happen. When the terrorist attacks came, they were not unexpected.

Those attacks came at places that helped make Brussels the international city with which I fell in love—the airport and in the metro station Maelbeek, near the European Commission and Council. I felt clueless and woozy on March 22 as I passed in front of the European parliament. I asked myself, Does any of this make any sense?

I found myself remembering a slogan that was chanted at a lot of protests in recent years: “Your wars, our dead.” But whose wars are we living through nowadays and for what purpose?

In the days since, I’ve had the unpleasant sense of being accustomed to this new way of life here, to the military uniforms and tanks on the streets, to attacks, to the dead, to the new Brussels.

After the Paris attacks, President Obama said that French youth would have to deal with a new reality of terrorism that American young people learned some years ago. I hope this is not true. I want Brussels to rediscover its joy and gentleness. I want to live together here with my fellow strangers. The more different, the better!

The post Even Before Terror Struck, Brussels Was Under Attack appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

When my husband got a transfer to Brussels and we packed up the family, I was scared but also excited. I found a job involving European Union public policy and started a fascinating new career. Our living costs declined and quality of life rose. (We found we were spending a third less than we used to, thanks largely to free education and cheap healthcare.) But our daughter’s English started to slip. She lost touch with American culture. Fearing she’d never feel at home in America if we didn’t go back, we left Brussels and returned to our previous home city of Chicago.

I expected the transition to be difficult, but I didn’t expect America to feel so foreign. These days, when looking at my neighborhood, I sometimes feel as if I’m surveying damage after a storm. “For Rent” signs are as numerous as “For Sale” signs used to be. My hairdresser says she’s “hanging in there” but has abandoned her dream of opening a shoe store. My dentist is still in business, but his office is now staffed by family. The gourmet food shop is gone, as is the pretentious French restaurant. Now there’s a weekly farmers market that accepts food stamps. Neighbors grow vegetables on their front lawn and keep chickens in the back. Cocky confidence has been replaced by a quiet hunkering down.

Only my daughter’s pediatrician seems to be prospering, but my impression may be due to the size of the staff her practice employs. “What on earth do all these people do?” I thought when I took my daughter there recently. One answer: make mistakes in the billing–mistakes that take additional time and staffers to undo. I was quickly knee-deep in health insurance red tape. In Belgium, which has a mixed public and private system, our doctor worked alone out of a simple home office. We paid her cash.

Minutes after my phone was installed, I received the first of a string of automated “welcoming” phone calls from companies, followed by an avalanche of personalized letters selling home security systems, duct cleaning, satellite TV, car insurance, restaurants, and food delivery services. Our phone would ring with scam calls about credit cards I don’t have, calls asking for donations to police officer funds, calls for credit repair services. I wanted to be a good citizen–the sort of person who has a neighborhood map, list of community activities, and instructions for proper recycling on the fridge. But I felt like my country just wanted me to be a good consumer.

When I actually am a consumer, I’m treated like a friend. Gone is “Hello, may I help you?” Now it’s “How are you?” At first, I wondered why these strangers cared and was too surprised to respond. After it happened numerous times, I asked store clerks why they were greeting me this way. The answer: “customer service training.” Waiters introduce themselves by their first names, break into conversations to ask how I’m doing, and sometimes comment on what I’ve left on my plate. Even my family isn’t that intrusive.

It’s not just customer service that’s strangely intimate. People I’ve never met before pepper me with so many questions I feel like I’m being frisked. How did my parents feel about our living in Europe? What do I do for a living? What does my husband do? Where does my daughter go to school? What’s my house like? I’ve wondered if I used to be this way, too. We go deep in our conversations, but without emotional investment. It’s like a conversational one-night stand. Now I understand what foreigners mean when they complain about that American who seemed so interested in learning all about them and then was never heard from again.

Maybe one reason for the rise of personal questions is that the range of neutral conversational topics has become so narrow. It’s as if certain subjects have turned into landmines that I obliviously trip off. When I’m asked what I miss most about Belgium and answer “free, high-quality healthcare and education,” some people take it as a political statement, as if I’m a socialist crusader. Or I’ll mention that I don’t plan to get a car, a statement that provokes, at best, incredulity. In Brussels, you felt guilty if your child went to school by car. At my daughter’s school in Chicago, administrators gave me a parking permit and couldn’t answer any questions about public transportation.

Mostly, though, everyone just seems tired and in need of a good rest. Even on Sundays, people are busy working or consuming: getting haircuts, buying electronics, carting around groceries. We’re a religious country, but we don’t pay much heed to the Sabbath. I’d gotten used to everything being closed on Sunday. We’d just relax and spend time with family and friends. Now, when I wake up Sunday morning, I pretend everything is closed.

I don’t mean to bellyache and find fault with everything. I love our superior public libraries. I love our public radio and television stations. I love our free public water fountains and restrooms. I love wandering around in grocery stores filled with giddy glee as I rediscover the foods of my childhood. Ooh, peanut butter! Wow, graham crackers! Yippee, marshmallows! And most of all I love seeing family and friends.

But I’m still bewildered, still trying to figure out how much America has changed, and how much I’ve changed. Sometimes, I feel like telling my friends to cut me a little slack. If I do something rude, it’s not on purpose. I’ve just forgotten how things work. And my thoughts, I admit, are often about how to hold onto some qualities of the life we had while overseas–the calm, the sense of community. Can any of those things become part of American life, too? The rest of the world has things to teach us, if we’ll let it. I don’t entirely remember what sort of American I was before I left, but perhaps that doesn’t matter so much. The real question is what sort of American I will be now.

Janice Thomson lives in Chicago.

*Photo courtesy of Trent Strohm.

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