PARIS (AP) — When Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Coco thought back and drew for a new documentary about the slaughter she survived 10 years ago at the French satirical journal, the memories that streamed from her marker pen were all black.
Black barrels of the guns that the al-Qaida-linked gunmen used to mow down 12 people, decimating Charlie’s staff of cheeky cartoonists who reveled in their right to lampoon all and sundry and poked fun at Islamic extremism with caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
The black hoods that the killers wore as they sprayed Charlie’s Paris offices with bullets and then rejoiced outside, yelling: “We avenged the Prophet Muhammad. We killed Charlie Hebdo!”
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And the darkness that, in the immediate aftermath, seemed to engulf all of France, shaken to the core by the horror and the dawning realization that the bloodshed had profoundly changed the country, scarring it forever.
The Charlie attack was just a first blow
As France was reeling from the attack, terror struck again. With a massive police manhunt closing in on brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, cornering the Charlie Hebdo killers in the industrial zone of a town northeast of Paris, accomplice Amédy Coulibaly, armed with an assault rifle, pistols and explosives, stormed a kosher grocery store in Paris, killing four people and taking others hostage.
“You are Jews and French, the two things I hate the most,” he told his hostages.
Ultimately, all three attackers died in near-simultaneous police raids.
“I am Charlie”
In its pain, France came together. The weekend after the attacks, millions marched in rallies of unity across the country. Paris boulevards and squares filled with more than a million people, including dozens of world leaders who walked arm-in-arm.
Marchers held up placards reading “Je Suis Charlie” — “I am Charlie” — a slogan that caught like wildfire, even overseas at rallies held from Berlin to Bangkok. Mourners also held up pens, symbolizing how the killings drove home, for many, the value of free speech.
Charlie bloodied but not bowed
Charlie has lived on, continuing to amuse and anger readers with its irreverence.
“INDESTRUCTIBLE!” roared the headline of its edition Tuesday that marked the 10-year anniversary of the Jan. 7, 2015, assault in inimitable Charlie fashion. Inside, under the headline “yes, we can laugh about God, especially if he exists,” the weekly journal published four pages of drawings from cartoonists who responded to its international call last year for “the funniest and meanest caricature about God.”
“Ten years on, Charlie Hebdo is still here,” its director and cartoonist Riss, who was wounded in the attack, wrote in an editorial. “So, too, are the causes of the drama and the determination of the journal’s members.”
