January 7th 2015. This day will stay in our memory for ever. 7.30 I’m getting out of the subway. It’s 2.30pm in France. The tragedy already happened. I read diagonally the news without realized how important it was. I arrived at the office I checked my facebook I had so many support posts. And now started the French newspaper reading. Incomprehension. With my French co-worker we had some many interrogations, we were stunned.
Our France is in pain. They attacked one of our fundamental: the freedom of speech.
You have the right to be not agreed. The right to reply too. Not the right to kill.
During this time people organized rallies everywhere in France, here we felt the need to be together too. Thanks to Florent Git was possible, he organized everything on Facebook, in few hours we were over 500.
6.00pm, the weather was really bad -30, you could see so many people, from 7 to 77 years old, a #Jesuischarlie poster on their frozen hands, some mums with kids defying the cold to show their support, French flags, Canadian flags, candles, flowers but above all faces off, anxiousness regards, all together with the incomprehension.
I started to write this post this morning on the subway, I don’t have time to read the news before I’m on the office. I was here when I arrived and turn on my computer. It was 8.00am, 2.00pm in France. It was the horror in France. I spent all my day connected in live to the news channels. We had live anxiety, the fear, the anger, a wave of panic felt in our country. I followed every minutes without be able to be focused in my work. At the same time I answered to my co-workers who didn’t really know what happened.
After few hours of an amazing work from our Police department, the denouement… Innocents’ person added to the, already too long, list of people who lost their life because of 3 fanatics. These lives will never come back. Dads will never play again with their kids, husbands will never kiss their wives again, women will never have the chance to heard love words. They killed these people. They didn’t kill their ideas. They didn’t kill the freedom of speech. They didn’t kill France.
I’m still stunned by the past few days. Between incomprehension and anger. Unfair and denial. This feeling I feel in my stomach, this anxiousness. It will need few days just to realize this massacre can happen in France in 2015.
It will be a before and a after as many people said on the medias.
I’m thinking to theses families who will have to learn how to live differently.
Keep together, France is one.
For the freedom of speech and because we don’t answer to a pen with a gun.
Rest in Peace.
Journal de ma région Le Dauphiné Libéré à propos de Toronto.
Photos par Juliette Capdevielle.
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