In defending their
founding rights to liberté and égalité, the French have once more found fraternité.
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| Demonstrations, Place Castellane, Marseille |
Silence followed the school bell that normally signals the
sound of lunch at 12 noon last Thursday; no ravenous teenagers running down the
hall to the canteen, nor shouts and screams of friends in the playground.
Instead, a silence that is just as loud and palpable settled over the high
school I am working in this year, as French teenagers, as unruly and apathetic
as adolescents anywhere, stood and paid their respects to those murdered in the
attack on the Charlie Hebdo headquarters last Wednesday.
Song superseded the silence, as, in unison, these
adolescents, suddenly so ignited by fervent passion for their nation, burst
into La Marseillaise, the national anthem.
To say that Marseille, where I am currently living and
working, does not always get along with Paris would be an understatement.
Marseille is an anomaly on the French map: a Mediterranean port town that has
grown and cultivated its own traditions from an influx of immigrants, refugees,
and French seeking a warmer climate, all mixed as the bubbling Bouillabaisse,
the local fish delicacy.
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| Vieux Port "Love Letters" for Charlie Hebdo |
Many of the children I am teaching are first or second generation
French immigrants; their parents come from North African countries or beyond.
These are people who, aware of their heritage, are not fully indoctrinated with
the ethos of liberté égalité fraternité that proudly blazons from every
official office and building around the major cities of the country.
Whilst the French remain proud of their introduction of
liberty in modern Western Europe, there is not a nationalism or pride from the
people themselves. France they see as a beacon of bygone greatness, at a time
when the English language has come to dominate.
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| Demonstrations in Marseille, Saturday 10 January |
Yet, the attack on Charlie Hebdo last Wednesday, and the
subsequent attacks across Paris on Friday, have ignited a dynamism that has
given France and her people an identity and a reason to believe in herself once
more.
Millions demonstrated across the country this weekend. It
was not just Paris that had large crowds; hundreds of thousands demonstrated in
Lyon, in Toulouse, in Nice, in Marseille and everywhere in between. Out of a
France in shock came a nation that is, for the first time perhaps since its
painful decolonisation that still haunts parts of Marseille, cohesive and
unified.
Marseille, renowned as the crime capital of France, has
never felt the safest of locations, probably thanks to such dubious titles.
Questions of assimilation and integration are rife: with a Muslim population of
more than 40%, France’s oldest city is quintessentially un-French. In 2012, it
was declared one of the most dangerous places to be young,
with drug and gun crime so high that certain politicians suggested the army
would be the only force strong enough to resolve the spiralling problem.
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| Demonstrations in Marseille, Sunday 11 January |
However, this week, as friends ask if I feel in danger here,
I can assuredly say that this is the safest I have been in this city,
surrounded by a population moving as one. Together, the largest movement in
France since the revolution has made other social factors mute. The French
segregation of state and religion creates a void that has threatened to tear
the country apart for decades; this weekend, the amalgam of Christians, Jews
and Muslims walked Marseille together in a scenario almost thought impossible
when such a high percentage of the population are still viewed as people of “foreignextraction” according to the town mayor.
With the republican march on Sunday, President Hollande
declared that “Paris is the capital of
the world today”, but more accurately, he should have said France is the
capital of the world. The nation has at once found a voice that is had long
since forgotten; all we have to do is point to the innumerable editions of
Charlie Hebdo that mocked the French state and politics as a crumbling and
cumbersome edifice. However, in
testifying for liberty and equality once more, the French found their brothers
in arms, internationally, and, most importantly, nationally. As 1.5 million
gathered in Paris, a further 2 million more marched in cities across the
country. This weekend, there was not a person that did not find themselves
embraced by the passion of a people injured, but unbroken.
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| Artwork at Vieux Port, Marseille |
Le Monde, France’s largest newspaper, declared the attack
“The French 9/11” and it is a comparison that might shock but the parallels are
undeniable. Not only did the event ring true in America, but in Spain (the
Madrid train bombings) and in the UK (7/7), where the idea of press repression
still carries a bitter taste following the Leveson Inquiry. France, faced with
fear and tragedy, responded with dignity and ignited a sentiment of resilience
that spread fast through the country. Protests in Marseille this past weekend
were without arrests.
At lunch last Thursday after the minute’s silence, the
teachers are complaining that they are feeling ill. There is a sense of
gravitas and momentum, and they can’t comprehend what is happening. A week ago
it would have been almost impossible to think that a localised event in Paris
would spur such movement at the opposite side of the country, but this is
indicative of a French malaise. Stifled and sick from years of settling
indifference, Charlie has provided a framework in which to discuss social and
cultural issues that have been restricted and taboo subjects in France for
decades, regardless of origins or doctrine.
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| Demonstrations in Marseille, Sunday 11 January |
La Marseillaise, originally a call to arms, still echoes
through the school corridors.
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