May you rest in peace with pens and paper, Charb.

Disclaimer: forgive me this off-topic personal post, but I HAD to write this.

A tall, quiet guy with huge thick glasses

I first met Stephane Charbonnier (Charb.), Charlie Hebdo’s publication director who was among the people killed in the attack – about 30 years ago.

He was a tall, quiet guy with huge thick glasses. He didn’t say much, but his cartoons already spoke volumes.

We were not classroom friends – he was 3 years older. We shared a passion. We were “colleagues.”

I wrote, he drew for the students newspaper (more like a magazine, actually, named “L’Echo des Collegiens”) under the direction of the best teacher I ever had: Ms. Sylvie Premisler, my history professor in middle school.

Like Charb, I caught the journalist bug at that time – we just used our pens differently.

I learned to write for an audience (and not just for my “dear diary”), to work with a team and to pursue the truth.

I learned hard work paid off as we won the Best French School Newspaper Award in 1986 after redesigning and rebranding it as “La Griffe” (that means “Claw” but also stands for “Mark” or “Brand”) after a failed attempt.

I learned the power of words and community as our team got the opportunity to participate in a crazy 24-hour “Hackathon” to build a giant European Student Newspaper with teenagers from different countries.

I also learned about failure when Charb., a handful of friends and I tried to launch a student paper, “Cause Toujours” (“Keep talking, I don’t care” – a title suggested by Charb.) in high school, but had to fold after only 2 issues under financial and administrative pressure.

During the few years I had the opportunity to collaborate with Charb, I was impressed by his amazing talent, kind personality, gentle manners and yet his vitriolic humour.

I knew the person, so I never got offended by his cartoons even when one of my articles became their target after failing to explain clearly a point. His illustration for the piece made clear my article lacked clarity. Thank you very much.

At that time already, his cartoons would tell you right away what you didn’t want to hear.

Charb and I didn’t keep in touch after the high school paper folded. But, I would often hear news about his struggles making it in the Parisian media world.

He kept being a source of inspiration when I studied communication in graduate school and later got my first reporter job for a small radio station far from Paris.

When I got laid off from this job after 6 years, Charb. had made it and was working for Charlie Hebdo he helped relaunch after working at “La Grosse Bertha,” another satirical French magazine.

Jobless in Paris, I contacted him and he kindly agreed to meet for lunch after giving me a tour of Charlie Hebdo’s office. He was still the same tall, quiet, humble guy with big glasses, a soft voice and his ideals intact.

I quickly found another radio job in the south of France where I worked until I moved to the US.

So, we never spoke again, but Charb. kept embodying for me the success story of the talented underdog who never sold out.

When Charlie Hebdo’s offices were targeted by a bomb in 2011, I was relieved to hear it was done during the night and nobody was hurt.

This morning, my first reaction when my husband told me about the attack was to ask if it was done during the night, hoping that everybody was safe. As you know, it wasn’t. Charb was first reported as severely injured so there was still some hope, until there was none.

We were not friends.
We were not colleagues anymore, but right now it feels like I lost a professional big brother, the quiet guy who made it big while still remaining true to himself.

May you rest in peace with pens and paper, Charb.