Night that the lights went out on Eiffel Tower...
THEY were the words which built a nation but you can hardly see them engraved on this famous Paris landmark any more. They’ve been obscured by all the posters, banners, candles and bouquets.
Rather than ‘Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite’, we now see ‘Je suis Charlie’.
Dominating the great Place de la Republique is the statue of the French national figurehead, Marianne, standing proudly above that great motto of the Revolution. Last night, even she had become ‘Charlie’ too.
Thousands had gathered here with the Mayor of Paris and the mayors of all the city’s 20 districts to light candles, lay wreaths and urge restraint.
Shortly afterwards, on the other side of the city, that epitome of all things French paid her respects.
On the stroke of 8pm, the lights went out on the Eiffel Tower.
As a three- dimensional grand tableau, this was one hell of a cartoon.
The shock of Wednesday’s massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, just a few minutes’ walk from Republique, has now given way to a mix of anger, defiance and great anxiety.
In the immediate aftermath, there had been a series of silent vigils across the nation. Last night, there was noisy chanting. Nothing incendiary. ‘Charlie n’est pas mort!’, ‘Char-Liberte’ – that sort of thing. But there has unquestionably been a change of tempo.
Yet behind all that ‘Je suis Charlie’ bravado, there is also a genuine sense of fear.
How could two home-grown assassins do something like this and get away with it? Who is next?
With the murder of yet another police officer in a Paris suburb at dawn yesterday followed by fresh reports of shoot-outs and police chases throughout the day, rumours were coming thick and fast.
A midday silence across the nation, heralded by the mighty bells of Notre Dame Cathedral, did nothing to calm the nerves. Vans full of fidgety armed police sat outside the offices of all the main French media outlets.
Around the world, tributes were paid from Berlin to Bangkok. Across Britain, police forces paused for two minutes at 10.30am yesterday – 24 hours after the shootings – to remember the 12 victims in Paris, who included two French police officers.
‘Every single person, other than the people manning the emergency lines, came out to show their support,’ said Mike Barton, chief constable of Durham Police.
In Athens, a crowd held up letters to spell out the message: ‘I do not hate, I am not afraid.’ Czech theatres held a minute’s silence before each performance.
Pope Francis celebrated a Mass in the Vatican in memory of the victims of the massacre. ‘The attack yesterday in Paris makes us think about so much cruelty – human cruelty... Let us pray, in this Mass, for the victims of this cruelty,’ he said.
The Pope added: ‘We also ask for those who are cruel so that the Lord may change their heart.’
SMALLER gatherings took place even further afield, from Delhi in India to the Tunisian capital of Tunis. In Tunisia, the birthplace of one of the slain cartoonists, Georges Wolinski, dozens paid homage to Charlie Hebdo in a candlelight vigil outside the French ambassador’s residence.
Editors at newspapers around the world expressed support by featuring subversive cartoons or reprinting some of the Paris weekly’s provocative covers. Dozens declared ‘We are Charlie Hebdo’ on their front pages.
Back in Paris, a memorial was taking shape next to the police barriers on Rue Nicolas Appert – named after the father of canned fruit.
Few will associate this blameless back street with tinned produce ever again. This was where the attack started.
By last night, the carpet of flowers, messages – and pens – had grown so large that it was hard to tell where it could go next.
This was a global tribute, too. Alongside ‘Je suis Charlie’-covered flags from Colom-
bia and China, I spotted a Welsh dragon inscribed with ‘Yr Wyf Charlie’. It put me in mind of those shrines which followed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.
An old man arrived with a couple of roses. Three students from a local art college struggled against the elements to get their candles going. ‘I was never really into Charlie Hebdo. It was more for my parents’ generation,’ said Pandora Le Dantec, 22. ‘But now we are all part of it.’
Suddenly, the crowds parted to make way for a very elegant, smartly-dressed lady in a dark coat bearing an enormous wreath of roses draped in blue and yellow. ‘I’m the Swedish ambassador and I want to pay my country’s respects,’ she whispered. The silence was eerie. At one point, France’s senior imam, Hassen Chalghoumi, turned up arm-in-arm with Marek Halter, a well-known Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor, in a show of Muslim/Jewish solidarity. ‘We are all one civilisation, all friends,’ said Mr Halter.
Amy Plum, an American-born children’s author who lives in Paris, was busy taping cards to a wall. Her teenage readers around the world had been sending her messages, she explained, and she had come to attach each and every one to the memorial. ‘I’ve got 127 cards in 17 languages,’ she told me, straining to glue a message from a Quebec schoolgirl high on the wall.
‘We feel that the whole world is with us and that is very comforting,’ explained Christophe Girard, 58, one of the big mayoral delegation at last night’s vigil in Place de la Republique.
AS WELL as being mayor of the city’s 4th district – or arronidissement – M Girard used to run the cultural section of City Hall. He is proud to count many of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists as friends.
Like many here, he had been chilled by the clinical precision of this attack and the fact that the killers could escape from a shootout with such relative ease. ‘This wasn’t just a random attack. This was like a Mafia thing.’
But he has been pleasantly surprised by the depth of feeling among young Parisians. ‘Charlie Hebdo belongs to my generation. It grew up with us as but young people didn’t really read it. Now, everyone is going to read it and identify with its spirit.’
A million copies – 20 times the usual circulation – will be printed next week. Among those queuing up for a copy will be Leon Sanchez, 18, a journalism student whom I found holding up a French flag inscribed with the mandatory ‘Je suis Charlie’. ‘I feel that, in a way, that they are my brothers,’ he said.
Along with everyone else in the Republique crowd last night, he fell silent at the start of a brief candlelit vigil. But the atmosphere soon changed as a tinny loudspeaker started parping out the Marseillaise.
Suddenly, clenched fists were held high. In each and every one was a pen – an eloquent and rather moving salute to the sanctity of freedom of expression. ‘Heroes!’ yelled a man at Marianne’s feet and up went the cheers, which were still ringing out late last night.
Looking on quietly from the shadows, the unsung heroes of this atrocity said nothing as they quietly got on with the job.
These may be alarming times for the French media. But, round here, it’s still a lot more dangerous to be a gendarme.