Darling, I'm Going to Charlie Read online

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  I.  The SDLP is a protection unit that is part of the French equivalent of the US Department of Homeland Security. [Translator’s note]

  3

  A DEATHLY SILENCE lingers over the Charlie Hebdo offices for several minutes—a horrifying “white noise,” as Laurent would later recall. Suddenly, the ones who escaped being killed hear gunfire in the distance. Outside, the men in black are firing at the police. Jean-Luc, the layout artist, decides to stand up. Cécile, the manager of Charlie’s publishing house, Les Échappés, is near him. He’d seen his colleague grab Luce, a specialist in ecology and animals, and watched the two women hide under the desks. After Jean-Luc, Sigolène gets up. She sees the horrific scene. Philippe, whose cheek has been ripped apart by a bullet, gestures to her to help him. Two of his friends’ bodies are on top of him. Sigolène walks toward him. She wants to lift the corpses off him and give him her hand. She wants to, but, overcome with nausea, she cannot. She then thinks she must immediately call the emergency services and goes to look for her cell phone, which she lost somewhere among the dead bodies. She finally finds it and dials the number, shouting into the phone “It’s Charlie Hebdo, get here fast, they’re all dead!” She then spots Cécile, Luce, and Coco, then Jean-Luc. Safe and sound. They stand and hug each other and wait—for what seems an eternity—for help to come.

  The seven people from SAGAM, along with Chantal, are still hiding under the desks, barricaded in; they’ve heard the gunshots. Someone quietly speaks: “They’ve murdered Charlie Hebdo.”

  Thomas, Julien, Nathalie, and Marie-France, cornered in the lobby of the theater, have also heard everything. When shouts reach the door of 10, rue Nicolas-Appert, they rush to the window in Marie-France’s office and see the two killers raising their Kalashnikovs in the air, shouting “The Prophet Mohammed has been avenged!” In the allée Verte, three policemen arrive on bicycles.

  * * *

  It must be 11:45 when Chantal hears the first siren: a police van has just arrived as backup to the Anticrime Squad. The three policemen inside fire at the back of the killers’ black Citroen. They are not equipped to fight against the assault weapons of their enemies, and they know it. The car backs into the boulevard Richard-Lenoir, and the policemen take cover.

  Ahmed Merabet, a policeman, is in a patrol car in the area not far from where the gunshots aimed at the Anticrime Squad were fired. He gets out of the car. From the window inside the theater, Thomas shouts down to him that two terrorists are leaving the Charlie Hebdo offices. Ahmed Merabet fires, takes a bullet to the leg, and tries to save himself by running toward the boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

  In the building on the other side of the street, a man has heard everything; he opens his window and starts the video camera on his cell phone. He sees the police officer fall onto the sidewalk, writhing in pain. Two armed men dressed all in black go over to him. One of them gets closer to the wounded man: “So you wanted to kill us, huh?” he sniggers. The policeman tries to get up and begs: “Don’t, man, it’s OK.” The killer aims his Kalashnikov and murders him in cold blood.

  The man at the window is beside himself by what he has just witnessed. He immediately posts the video on Facebook. The sight of a murder taking place as it happens would be seen all over the world and cause shock waves in social media. A few minutes later, the video post would be taken down. Today, the man who filmed it calls himself a “hostage” of the events he regrets having filmed. He did not realize the risk he was running. And since then, he can’t sleep.

  As for the brave Ahmed, he undoubtedly did not have time to think about his mother, with whom he still lived. He had just finishing building a house for the two of them and had sent out invitations to a housewarming party. He was hoping to get a job with the Criminal Investigation Department and had passed the exams with flying colors. He was dreaming of a new project: becoming a lawyer. The assassins killed that dream.

  A little while later, Thomas, the actor, sees two men arrive; one of them is holding a camera. Within a few minutes, the street is filled with police officers and journalists. So what exactly happened between the first call, at 11:18, and the moment when the local police became aware of the bloodbath that took place at the threatened newspaper, at 11:40? The commanders of the local Anticrime Squad admitted that they didn’t know the Charlie Hebdo offices were located at rue Nicolas-Appert, or were even in the area where they worked. They were surely not the only ones. But why wasn’t the name of the newspaper mentioned in the first emergency messages? Is there no communication at all between the Protection Unit and the local police headquarters?

  Chantal hears the first police siren at 11:45. It would be followed by many others. Next, a cacophony of sirens. One after the other, the employees from SAGAM emerge from their hiding places. Thirty minutes that would shatter Chantal’s life: she became claustrophobic, terrified by the slightest sound, and unable to sleep, and has been on sick leave from work since the attack.

  Before getting away, and without seeming in a hurry, one of the two killers picked up the shoe he’d lost while running after Ahmed Merabet and shouted: “Tell the media that we did this for Al-Qaida in Yemen!”

  The two men were certainly not lone wolves, as was sometimes reported in the press. They had received orders. A few days after the attack, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula released a video confirming that it had ordered the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Very quickly, investigators traced the accomplices back to people who had already fled to Turkey via Syria. Among them were the Belhoucine brothers. From Turkey, they sent this message to their family: “Don’t worry. We have joined the caliphate. We would rather live in a country ruled by Sharia law and not by laws invented by men.”

  4

  AFTER MY MEETING, I decide to take a taxi. At Gobelins station, the driver is very friendly. The blanket of fog has lifted, it’s twelve thirty, and I feel good. My meeting with the person I’d long wanted to interview has gone well; I’ll now be able to make some progress on the stage play I’ve been working on for a few months. I decide to go home for lunch before meeting Georges at the quayside. I imagine he is now sharing the delicious Epiphany cake with the Charlies. I also think that in the end, our forthcoming move is a bit of luck, and that even though I was worried when we first found out, I now feel rather good about it. Something a little new, moving forward together as a couple, after forty-seven years at the side of my talented husband. Yes, the idea of moving now makes me feel exhilarated.

  I automatically turn on my phone to call Georges and remind him of our appointment. He doesn’t answer. Did he forget to switch his phone on after the editorial meeting? I leave him a message. I know he always calls me back the minute he sees my name on the screen. I’m about to put my phone away when I notice I have an awful lot of voicemails. Twenty-five, to be precise, and as many texts, some from friends I haven’t seen in months. All in less than an hour? So many calls? I’m confused. I start to read them. “How is Georges?” “Is Georges at home?” “Did Georges go to the Charlie meeting?” “Where is Georges?” “Have you heard from Georges?”

  I don’t understand. I can hear the last words Georges called out to me a few hours earlier, before leaving the apartment: “Darling, I’m going to Charlie.” So that’s where he is. Otherwise, where else could he be? Has something happened to him? “Monsieur,” I say to the taxi driver, “I’ve just turned on my phone and there are a lot of messages, especially from some people I haven’t seen in a long time, asking me about my husband.” We are now at the Sénat, at the top of the rue Tournon. The driver slows down, pulls over, and turns around to look at me. “Madame, I don’t know what your husband does . . . But haven’t you heard what’s happened?” “No, what’s going on?” My heart starts beating faster. “There was a terrorist attack, Madame, and it’s serious!” “A terrorist attack? Where? My husband was at his newspaper . . .” “A terrorist attack, Madame, at Charlie Hebdo.”

  I feel as if I no longer inhabit my own body
. “We have to go there,” I tell him. “I want to see my husband.” The driver hesitates and advises against it. “The whole area is already blocked off,” he explains. “We’d never get near it.” I insist, I absolutely want to see my husband, I want to be with him. The pressure mounts, a strange burning sensation runs through me. My mind is confused. I can’t think straight. At that moment, my cell phone rings. Arnauld, my son-in-law, is at 10, rue Nicolas-Appert, the site of the attack. His office was close by, so as soon as he heard about it through social media, he rushed over to Charlie Hebdo. “Well? Where is Georges? I want to be with him.” I don’t let Arnauld speak and he finally cuts in. He agrees with the taxi driver that I should go home and wait for news. “No one knows anything yet.” “What do you mean, no one knows anything? That’s impossible . . .” I insist again, Arnauld lies to me, I want to see Georges, talk to him, hold him close. “No,” says Arnauld. “No, you have to go home.” His voice is shaking, with anguish, with fear, and I understand only too well. He hangs up. “Are we going to your place? Madame, please, it makes more sense,” the driver insists. “I really hope nothing’s happened to your husband.” He turns the radio on. Together, we cling to every word of the news, but I hear nothing, understand nothing. Two men armed with Kalashnikovs, gunfire in the Charlie Hebdo offices, journalists kept at a distance by the police, and then, nothing more, except a continuous loop about the gunfire, the dead or wounded, and that it was a terrorist attack. “Darling, I’m going to Charlie.” I remember the last words Georges wrote to me, the day before yesterday: “Darling, I went for some sushi, rue de la Chaise. It’s 9:15, I’m going to read for a while and then go to sleep, thinking of you. I’m worried because you do too much and you’re tired. I love you, as always.” And another message, from a while ago, that I can’t forget: “Darling, I’m thinking of you, you are the woman of my dreams. Alas! Life is short. See you tomorrow, I think we’re going to the theater (Vieux Co), your husband of 42 years. I love you, G.”I

  The phone rings again: it’s my daughter, her voice is choked up. “Mom, you have to go home, I’m coming over.” “Are you at Charlie Hebdo?” She’s hung up. The phone rings again, just as the taxi heads up the boulevard Raspail. “Do you have any news of Georges?” I have difficulty recognizing the voice of Françoise, a friend of mine who is a judge. “Françoise, we have to find out what happened to Georges, right away.” Georges still isn’t answering his phone. Françoise tells me not to go to where the attack took place and hangs up very quickly.

  We arrive at my building and the driver walks me to the door. He helps me inside. “Madame,” he says, tears in his eyes, “I hope nothing has happened to your husband. I’ll be thinking of you. I’ll pray for you.”

  What could possibly happen to Georges that wouldn’t also happen to me? I stagger up the stairs. I can picture the tears in the taxi driver’s eyes, tears I will never forget. It takes me ages to open the door to my apartment. Once inside, I drop my handbag and the documents I’m carrying and think about what Arnauld said. I must sit on the sofa and wait for his call. The idea doesn’t even occur to me to turn on the radio or the TV. I pace back and forth in my bedroom, I turn the pages of a manuscript I promised to read, but the words are blurred. I can think only of Georges, his smile, his kisses, his tenderness, Georges who wrote in several of his books that “tenderness is the culmination of love.” For him, love had to remain intense, or it didn’t exist at all. And he knew how to show his tenderness in so many ways. I am obsessed by one image: Georges in the editorial room. I want to hold him tight, take his face in my hands, kiss him on the mouth. I want to feel his body, alive.

  * * *

  I.  Also called the Vieux Co, Le Vieux-Colombier is a theater in Paris.

  5

  AT 12:17, THE Anticrime Squad goes into the SAGAM office, where Chantal and her colleagues have come out of their hiding places. The questions come thick and fast. How many were there of them? How old? What did they look like? What were they wearing? What kind of weapons did they have? Chantal can still feel the barrel of the Kalashnikov against her temple. She can barely speak. She is shaking, pressing her cell phone against her, the link with her husband and children. The link with the life she has just nearly lost. “You can go,” says one of the officers, who seems to be in charge. “We’ll call you if we need you.”

  In the street, Chantal comes face-to-face with the emergency service workers, ambulance drivers, firefighters, medics, police officers, journalists, camera operators, photographers, politicians. She passes Manuel Valls, the prime minister, who has taken over from the president at the scene of tragedies. She wonders why they have both come here. Everyone is posing for the cameras in front of 10, rue Nicolas-Appert, but why? To show solidarity? On the second floor, there is a horrific scene; a monstrous attack has taken place. There is nothing more that can be said. The words endlessly repeated in front of the cameras are meaningless.

  The area is completely blocked off, and traffic in Paris is almost at a standstill. The arrival of ministers and other officials at the scene has mobilized the police to protect them. From my apartment, I hear the sirens of the motorcades that precede the cortege of government cars. And I still don’t know where Georges is and why he hasn’t called me. I left him a message, so he should call me back. If he doesn’t, it’s because he can’t. But why? Waiting fills me with pain, confusion, incomprehension. Georges, we have an appointment on the quayside to plan our new life! I’m thinking about the two of us, but now I should be thinking about him, and him alone. Suddenly, a question comes to mind: Why has Arnauld called me and not Georges?

  In the theater, Thomas has hunted down a journalist. Even though they weren’t allowed to cross the roped-off area, one of them has sneaked in through the courtyard of the theater and is hiding in the restroom; from the window, he is filming the emergency services personnel rushing around, the groups of police officers and the families who are arriving on the scene. Furious, Thomas kicks him out of his hiding place. He’s seen enough today. He knows that in the building opposite, on the second floor, the illustrators he so admired have lost their lives, killed by terrorists. An attack has just taken place at Charlie Hebdo, and, he thinks, nothing was done to stop it. It must have been 11:00 when the Kouachi brothers arrived. In spite of the call made at 11:17, why didn’t the police get there before the killers made it into the Charlie offices? He himself had been an impotent witness. He wants to get away from this hell at all costs. He says good-bye to his team and tells them he’s leaving for Avignon. But it is impossible to leave the police perimeter without an escort. A police car accompanies him to the place de la Bastille, allowing him to pass. Completely distraught by what he has just lived through, he heads south.

  After Thomas leaves, Nathalie and Julien take refuge inside the theater, where the people labeled “involved” or “survivors” have been brought. They are wearing tags around their necks that say INVOLVED. One of them says that when the police went into the Charlie editorial room, they were shocked by the sight of the massacre before their eyes. Devastated, they had difficulty going inside and leaning over the victims. An officer with a loud voice then shouted: “Are there any survivors? Come out!” Survivors. Everyone who could has left the offices and is being cared for by the emergency services workers. Then the families of the victims who had come to rue Nicolas-Appert are allowed to go into the theater.

  Everywhere people are crying, sobbing, shouting. People want information but nothing is leaked; the police remain silent. Do they know? Are there any instructions? Chloé Verlhac, the wife of the illustrator Tignous, wrapped up in a big scarf, tries to sneak through the crowd of journalists, politicians, ambulance drivers, medics, and police officers to get to the front door of 10, rue Nicolas-Appert. The security men stop her. Like me, she wants to know; she wants to hold her Tignous in her arms and quickly take him home, where their two young children are waiting for them. No, impossible. She can either go to the theater or to the tents set u
p by the police and the medics. But what she really wants is an answer to her questions: “Where is my Tignous? What happened to him? Is he up there, in the office?” She gets no reply and is asked to move along. Once again, she slips between the police officers to avoid the photographers and journalists who are hovering around the families to get a scoop. And then, just as she steps onto the sidewalk on her way to the theater, someone tells her that ten people are dead and others wounded. She bursts into tears, hides her face in her scarf. Her legs give way. She goes into the theater and waits, takes the glass of water that Nathalie hands her. She waits but can’t take it anymore. Then she corners a policeman and orders him to tell her if her Tignous is dead, wounded, or alive. Alive? No, she no longer believes that. He would already be there to take her in his arms. “Please, tell me. Tell me.” And, amid a crowd of people in tears, she hears the news that he is dead. Nathalie can’t believe how coldly it is done, such information casually announced to no one in particular, or nearly. Even though she had suggested to the police that they meet with the families in the empty manager’s office. But they didn’t follow up.

  Hélène, Philippe Honoré’s daughter, had been warned by her mother. She had gone to the 11th arrondissement to get more information. Impossible to get near the site. She ended up back on the rue Richard-Lenoir, along with the medics and police officers who barely answered her questions. She sees ambulance drivers go past, carrying stretchers.

  * * *

  One policeman finally feels sorry for this young woman shivering in the freezing cold and sends her to the Red Cross tent. She goes in. They have her sit down, give her a glass of water, and promise to get answers to her questions. “Where is my father? Was he one of the victims? Is he hurt?” Hours go by, with no news. She decides to go into the theater. Perhaps she’ll find someone from Charlie, a survivor, who can give her information. But waiting is unbearable. She constantly calls her mother, who is glued to the television. For now, no details are being given on any of the channels. She finally makes it onto the sidewalk in front of the theater. The police push her back. “We only allow people who were involved here.” At that moment, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, surrounded by bodyguards, enters the theater. Hélène can’t stand it anymore; she gives vent to her anger and shouts: “They let politicians in but not the families!” Anne Hidalgo has heard her. She turns around and gestures to Hélène to come with her. Inside, politicians are mingling with the “involved” and the members of the Charlie Hebdo team who didn’t go to the meeting and so are still alive. Hélène rushes over to Jean-Luc, the newspaper’s layout artist. He knows. He puts his arm around Hélène and tells her: “Your father is dead, like Wolinski, like Cabu, like Elsa Cayat, like Charb and his bodyguard, like Bernard Maris, like Mourad.” Now she too knows. The presence of the “involved,” others like Jean-Luc and Laurent, helps her through her pain.