On a Friday in January, before dawn, a 43-year-old was taken from his home in Saint-Léger-sous-Cholet, in western France. He was driven 30 miles to the small commune of Basse-Goulaine, where he was beaten, bound, and abandoned. Twelve hours later, once the sun had set in the suburbs of Paris, three men armed with a single handgun kicked in the door of a family home in Verneuil-sur-Seine. They beat a husband and his wife in front of their children, cable-tied all four of them, turned the house over, and left for the train station. It was the 70th such attack worldwide in under a year.
Two days later, I boarded a flight to Singapore.
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