“Je Suis Charlie” at RC: Charlie Hebdo Attack Hits Home for First-year

By Auden Deng ‘16

Published February 2015

The controversial cover of the Charlie Hebdo survivors’ issue. 

Matthieu Meyer ‘18, an international student from Paris, France, frowned and squeezed out, “I do not know politics.” He tottered and tried to express his idea clearly: “The Left [the Parti Socialiste] and the Right [the Front National] keep on fighting each other constantly. It is quite a mess.” Though politics has much bewildered him, Meyer was thrown into the midst of its mess and its bloody repercussions on Jan. 7, 2015, the day of the Islamist extremist terrorist attack on the headquarters of French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Thankfully, Meyer and his family were unharmed, and Meyer acquired a copy of the now outsold magazine, which he has been gracious enough to share with The Sundial and the rest of campus.

Meyer was out running at the time of the attack. He recalled, “It [the shooting] happened at twelve o’clock, but I didn’t find out until I hung out at my friend’s house around half past two in the afternoon. He told me what had happened earlier in the morning.”

The attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo resulted in the deaths of twelve people, including members of the magazine’s staff and police officers who responded to the scene, and wounded another eleven. As if the attack wasn’t terrifying enough, the office of Meyer’s father, the chief editor of the GEO magazine, was situated among the chaos, near the office of Charlie Hebdo. Meyer commented that his father and his coworkers “were stunned” upon learning of the attack; furthermore, the Préfecture de police de Paris, the Paris police-force, placed policemen in front of every magazine headquarter, including GEO magazine, as a precaution. Nonetheless, his father returned home that evening calm.

The terrorists’ bullets had harried the Parisians’ hearts painfully. The next day the people of Paris lined up in front of kiosks and bookshops to purchase the survivors’ issue of Charlie Hebdo. The magazine planned to print only sixty thousand copies, but after the attack, the remaining staff promised to circulate a million copies. Because of the financial strain of increasing the magazine’s circulation so significantly, many organizations, such as the Google-backed Fonds pour l’Innovation Numérique de la Press (the Digital Innovation Press Fund), donated money and resources. In the end, after the first print run sold out in mere hours on Jan. 14, the magazine’s circulation was expanded to three million, then to five million, then to seven million copies by Jan. 17.

When Meyer was asked whether he knew of Charlie Hebdo, he said, “I knew it because of this attack. But I did not realize how serious the impact would be.”

Originally, Meyer would not buy a copy of Charlie Hebdo. Nevertheless, his mother asked him if he wanted a copy to show his friends at Randolph. He realized, then, that buying a copy was a good idea. He left the door after mere seconds and made his way towards his first Charlie Hebdo. What he saw and sensed on his way was the pride of the French nation, for the night of the attack hundreds of thousands of Parisians held vigil throughout the city. “I am proud of being French and everyone in the Union feels the same,” he said.