Two red holes while he was still holding his pencil.
* * *
I. François Cavanna (1923–2014) was an author and editor of satirical newspapers. He contributed to the creation and success of Hara-Kiri and Charlie Hebdo. He also translated books about famous cartoonists.
8
THE SHOCK WAVE spread all over the world. Journalists called from England, the United States, Germany, Norway, and Italy, where Georges counted many famous cartoonists among his friends. One day, alone in a studio, I tell the BBC journalist who is interviewing me from London about the Post-its that now cover the walls of the apartment. Georges used to leave them for me on the table in the entrance hall if we weren’t going out together, and especially on Tuesday nights when I was often out without him. “But what on earth could he write to you?” the young woman asked. “Simple words, but words of love.” I’d gotten into the habit of keeping them in my desk drawer, but one day, I put some of them on the wall of the hallway that led to the kitchen. When my women friends came over, they were envious. They’d never gotten that kind of attention from their husbands or partners. After the attack, I covered all the walls of the apartment with the pink, yellow, and white Post-its. Every day, I stop in front of one and read it. I now know each message by heart and can recite them to myself. I see Georges’s hand as he writes them. His hand was his work tool, and it was grazed by a stray bullet.
The day after the BBC broadcast, the journalist calls me back. Touched by what they’ve heard, her listeners want to see the Post-its on the Internet. I agree to allowing a photographer come to immortalize them. As soon as they appear on the BBC website, they are retransmitted throughout the media. They make their way around the world.
Beyond the emotion and astonishment of an entire people, the shock wave brought about a movement of brotherhood on January 11. Brotherhood, an outdated word that the January 7 attack had brought back into fashion. After what the French historian Pierre Nora called “a monstrous event” in the revue he founded, Le Débat, France stood in solidarity against the terrorists and acted. But which France? Points of view diverge.
* * *
To me, the essential thing was the number of people: four million took to the streets throughout the entire country, marching in close-knit rows, singing the “Marseillaise,” assuring the police of their support as they passed by. A true union of people as no one had seen in a very long time. Some compared it to Victor Hugo’s death in 1885, when a million people turned out to follow the funeral cortege in a great show of national unity.
But the shock wave went beyond France’s borders, making it a global demonstration, from Japan to Africa to the United States. An enormous demonstration in favor of freedom of speech, undoubtedly, but also a reaction to the climate of war established by Muslim fundamentalists. A climate that was of concern to Pope Francis when he visited Sarajevo in June 2015. There he spoke of a “third world war” that was happening in small stages, and he encouraged a dialogue between cultures and religions. “Without which,” he added, “barbarism and the cries of hateful fanatics will win out.” And Pierre Nora in Le Débat explained that in this world movement, it was really France who had been supported, “the France of reason, of culture, of enlightenment, against the deadly obscurantism that claimed to come from Allah.”
Even though everyone requested that I take part, I did not participate in that movement. The Charlies went on the march, each wearing a headband with the name of the newspaper on it. But I had been overwhelmed by a state of shock that made it impossible for me to communicate in any way, in any way whatsoever. I only just managed to bear friends who wanted to be with me in my apartment, to distract me, in the positive sense of the word, from the tragedy that had struck my life. I found their laughter and chatter unbearable. I had the feeling that they were stealing my mourning, leading me away from my sadness. But I wanted to enclose myself in those very feelings because it gave me the illusion of still being with Georges a little, of prolonging my life with him.
* * *
And yet, when some of them came back from the demonstration on the evening of January 11, I asked them many questions. Who had marched? Young people? Older people too? Secular people? Catholics? Muslims? “There couldn’t have been a lot of Muslims,” a close friend told me. “In any case, I didn’t see anyone from North Africa, Muslim or not.”
The surviving Charlies went back to work, despite being physically and psychologically battered. It was essential that humor, satire, and even blasphemy win out over barbarism. We must never forget that France is the country of impertinence, and has been since Rabelais and Voltaire. When the next issue came out, the French again demonstrated their solidarity. Many of them knew nothing about the satirical newspaper; others did not like the humor in it, or humor at all, even attacking it on occasion, and yet, out of solidarity, millions of them went to reserve their copies of what was dubbed the “survivors issue” at their corner newsstand. Those first Wednesdays following the attack, people waited in line. For whom? Why? Among the victims of the Kouachi brothers were humorists familiar to the French, like Cabu and Georges. And those French men and women identified with those men who, on many occasions, taught them to see things from a different angle. The way Georges had converted me to laughter, sarcasm, humor—thanks to him, I became a better person; I learned tolerance and freedom.
9
CHARLIE HEBDO, which was dying before the attack, with its twelve thousand subscribers and some forty thousand sales a month, soon achieved astronomical sales figures. How is it possible to forget that its journalists and cartoonists would undoubtedly be unemployed today if the attack had not taken place? The sale of seven million copies of the famous survivors issue brought in some 10 million euros.
“A nightmare, those millions!” exclaimed the commentator Patrick Pelloux. Taking over the helm of the newspaper became an interesting project all the same. Who would take on the responsibility? Charb had left no heir as editor, just a partner: Riss. The debate over the future of the newspaper did not stop there. Even though the survivors did not give much away in the days following the attack, the wave of millions of euros earned thanks to the volume of sales after the attack upset many people. Tension grew between the stockholders—two people and a few of their relatives—and the members of the editorial team, who were concerned about creating a collective that was better informed and that agreed on decisions. It was a shame that despite the show of solidarity aroused by the attack (and by the fact that the newspaper became a symbol of freedom of expression), managing the capital should have generated so much conflict, first reported in the press and then all over the world. That summer, an agreed solution was finally found, arbitrated by the minister of culture. Charlie Hebdo became the first newspaper in the “Statut d’entreprise solidaire de presse,” a French law passed on April 17, 2015, creating a new legal press status. The law makes it a requirement for a qualifying company to reinvest at least 70 percent of its annual profits back into the company. The two stockholders decided to do the same with the remaining 30 percent, refusing to take any dividends. Finally, if any stockholding was to be allowed at all, only those collaborating on Charlie Hebdo could buy shares in the newspaper. That is what was announced by Riss. Watch this space. And Riss added in an interview in Le Monde, “When we sold less, we were more at peace. Now everyone is watching us, so many people expect us to take on a certain role, and everything could happen all over again.” What precisely? A new conflict? To avoid that, let the newspaper remain the true symbol of freedom of expression! When Denis Robert’s film dedicated to François Cavanna came out, a moving film on the history of the newspaper, a journalist suggested writing an article about it in the paper, which the management turned down. Cavanna’s name would never be mentioned in the newspaper; he felt he had been dispossessed, as the name Charlie Hebdo belonged to him. It would not be worthy of its/his history.
Alongside the stupendous sales, donations increased. Google
spent 250,000 euros, the Associated Press and Pluralism sent 200,000 euros, and over two hundred thousand individuals donated a total of more than 1 million euros through the intermediary of the Internet platform Jaidecharlie.fr. Other contributions followed, and today the paper holds a kitty of more than 4 million euros. From the first days of February onward, Charlie Hebdo’s editorial administrators, as well as Patrick Pelloux, appeared on TV and radio to explain that the contributions would be given to the families of the victims as soon as possible.
And, in fact, exactly one month after the attack, on February 7, Charlie Hebdo’s lawyers invited the families involved to a meeting. The intention was generous, the objective to help us “go through mourning.”
There were many of us at that meeting, the Charlies having decided to include the families of the victims of the Hypercasher attack (the murder of four Jewish people at a kosher supermarket two days after the Charlie Hebdo attack), as well as the families of the murdered policemen. I listened to one of Charlie Hebdo’s lawyers describe the newspaper’s high sales figures and give us information about the cartoonists and journalists, both present and absent during the attack, who were traumatized, who were experiencing post-traumatic stress symptoms, and who were in therapy, all the time imagining what Georges would have thought of it all.
He would have undoubtedly settled for a restrained expression of irony. Especially when he learned that the publication, now set up in the offices of the left-wing newspaper Libération, had just taken on a director of communications: the most famous of all the “spin artists,” the woman who got Dominique Strauss-Kahn out of the mess we all know about. “Why have they hired her?” I asked, astounded. She was not at all the kind of person Cavanna or Cabu or Georges would have liked. What was she doing in the anarchic world of Charlie Hebdo? She was called in as backup, I was told, to manage the excessive number of interviews. In fact, she came to Charlie through one of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s advisers, Richard Malka, who was one of Charlie Hebdo’s lawyers. Was this the prelude to setting up a new team, called in to take over the reins of a newspaper whose business was booming? Rumors spread, but as we all know, you should never trust rumors.
After giving us the sales figures, one of the lawyers introduced us to the “pool of colleagues” whom we would need to help us face the procedures required by the Fonds de Garantie (the insurance company) to receive compensation or royalties, and whom we would need to work with if we decided to bring a civil case. Their fees would be paid by the newspaper, we were told. I appreciated the generosity that had been the source of that decision. In fact, putting together a claim for compensation required detailed knowledge of how to complete the insurance company’s forms, before the Fonds de Garantie—an organization composed of experts and lawyers, as well as administrators appointed by the government—began examining them and starting the claims procedures. Then the lawyer moved on to the subject of gifts to the families. How should the distribution be organized? Would the beneficiaries be only the families of the victims of the newspaper, or should the families of the victims of the kosher supermarket and the policemen be included? The lawyer concluded that they were going to consider the matter.
The meeting continued. A psychiatrist, who was also a legal expert, explained that she would be at our disposal. “Going through mourning” was not an easy thing, especially after an attack, she explained. The consequences of the tragedy we had just lived through threatened to leave side effects that were best treated immediately. In any case, for the file to be sent to the insurance company, we were required to include a statement on our psychological condition, a kind of test to evaluate our suffering. This legal expert, who was young and charming, made you feel like going to see her—and even to agree to take the test, a test that, frankly, I found shocking. But she immediately warned us that she would be handing over our files to her colleagues.
After the meeting, I met a friend for lunch. We spent our time together wondering how to quantify suffering. Later on, I put the question to another friend, a distinguished psychoanalyst, who told me that the test had been designed in the United States, after the September 11 attacks, and that France had used it to evaluate moral prejudices after disasters and terrorist attacks in the past. This was surely not the best thing that France had borrowed from the United States, and my psychoanalyst friend was, to be honest, particularly shocked that I would have to undergo that type of ordeal.
Going through mourning. That was an expression Georges couldn’t stand. He said that it didn’t mean anything. We often discussed it without really agreeing. Georges rejected any psychiatric or psychoanalytical work. What was he afraid of? To look deep inside himself, in his inner temple, where you discover the truth about yourself and all the little compromises you make with yourself?
* * *
In the days that followed January 7, I felt nothing but pain and despair. Then the pain gave way to a kind of denial. From that point on, I irrationally maintained that I would live as if Georges were away on a trip. I added, quietly, as if to better convince myself, “Except Georges won’t be coming back.” But I said it without really wanting to believe it. In his room, I remade the bed, tidied up the books scattered over the floor and the stacks of shirts and sweaters in his closet. I hung up ties that he’d never worn, except for the one he’d bought in a museum in Washington that was decorated with books. He often wore it for the launch of the Paris Book Fair. I spent time in the middle of his world. I sat at his desk and looked at each object that cluttered up the table. I put everything in order. I behaved as if he were away for a few days, and imagined him coming home. Three months after the attack, I still felt as if I would never emerge from this pretense.
The first time I had to go to the supermarket, I stood at the entrance to the store for a good ten minutes without knowing what I should buy. At that moment, I realized that until January 7, my shopping list contained things that Georges liked. I cooked food that he liked. And what about what I liked? Whatever that might have been, I didn’t want anything; I walked up and down the aisles, overcome by nausea. I could picture Georges again, coming home with his mushrooms or baby artichokes, then settling down in the kitchen to prepare a delicious artichoke stew or, when they were in season, a pan of divine fried mushrooms. Now shopping is a chore I avoid as much as possible.
Procrastinating is one of the most terrible words in the world to me. And the day when I became aware I was procrastinating somewhat, curled up in moments of a past that made me languid and led me to feel numb and locked up, I rebelled against myself. I was not keeping the wonderful promises of those early days, when I had sworn I would shed no tears, that they would be dried by action. It was more than time to react, to confront the bureaucracy of the authorities, to put in order an estate that had been made difficult because of Georges’s thousands of drawings and hundreds of publications, to transform all the work he had accomplished for more than fifty years into a respected body of work that was accessible to the greatest number of people.
One sunny day in spring in Briançon, opposite mountains still covered in snow, I found myself standing behind a rostrum that had been set up in the courtyard of the lycée where Georges had studied for a while, and where a great homage was being paid to him. Improvising a speech on the young man from Tunisia who had been left all alone and had disembarked, in awe, right in the middle of this snowy Briançon landscape, I spoke of how much his vitality, his vitality of spirit, and his very obvious wounds, which had always remained raw, had been the source of our emotional and intellectual life as a couple. That affirmation transformed me back into the person I had been before the January 7 attacks, the person who had to be reborn. My sadness would remain infinite, it would be a part of me from then on, but it would not prevent me from living.
10
DENIAL WAS REPLACED by anger and revolt. I had come to know a new land, the land of misery and solitude, and I had to understand why and use all my strength to fight it.
&nb
sp; During the day, I made an effort to understand, and in detail, questioning the police, the minister of the interior, the “people involved,” and the authorities, leafing through files, rereading articles, watching videos, listening to live programs, then listening again, examining everything that might have allowed the attack to be prevented. I wanted my simple happiness beside Georges to remain, our love, our plans, our discussions, our desires and their realization, all to remain, until life decided otherwise.
Threatened more than ever, as Angélique, the newspaper’s receptionist who took the phone calls and heard the insults, revealed, Charlie Hebdo still was not protected. As Thomas the actor pointed out, the police van had disappeared in November 2014. Charb had only two bodyguards instead of the original three. Why? And then I started to wonder: How could this attack have taken place right in the middle of Paris, in the offices of a satirical newspaper that received so many threats every day? Angélique spoke in front of the cameras of the Premières Lignes agency to explain that male voices had warned her they would actually cut off her head one day. Yet no additional measures seem to have been taken to protect Angélique and the others—the administrators, journalists, and illustrators. And among them, Georges. Four years before, a bomb had damaged the newspaper’s offices. No one could ignore the fact that the newspaper was in real danger. So who had made the decision to lower the level of protection, and why?
Darling, I'm Going to Charlie Page 5
