The designer Coco testifies to the attack of January 7, 2015 on Charlie Hebdo and its consequences. Despite the trauma, the one who was forced to open the editorial doors to the Kouachi brothers believes that humor and satire remain essential to transcend death and bounce back.
Originally from Haute-Savoie, Corinne Rey aka “Coco” grew up in Annemasse, on the outskirts of Geneva. Very quickly, drawing became his favorite means of expression. After studying art at the European School of Image in Poitiers, she arrived at Charlie Hebdo newspaper as an intern. She also participated in the launch of the “little French-speaking satirist” Vigousse, by producing its very first cover.
On January 7, 2015, the day of the first editorial session of the year at Charlie Hebdo, Coco had to pick up her daughter from daycare. She goes out to smoke a cigarette. Then it’s nothingness. Absolute darkness. Under the threat of the Kouachi brothers’ Kalashnikovs, she is forced to open the door to Charlie’s premises where the editorial staff will be decimated. Twelve deaths that still haunt her.
>> A lire : Ten years later, Charlie Hebdo commemorates the first attack in a dark year for France
Keep drawing at all costs
Coco, alongside the other survivors of the attack, decides the following week to continue drawing for his newspaper to prove that he is not dead and that freedom of expression is not negotiable.
“The first thing that comes to us, even if I don’t know how to explain it to you, even if we are traumatized, even if it is very hard, is to be able to make the newspaper despite everything. Because if terrorists take away the freedom of expression of people who make drawings, they will have won and imposed their law Even. [le dessinateur] Riss, for example, who was injured and bedridden in the hospital, was up for redoing two drawings for this famous Survivor issue, as we called it,” explains Coco with emotion in one of the five interviews granted on the RTS show La vie àprès last November.
Counteract trauma or guilt
The designer also evokes the safe bubble of calm and reflection quickly found in the premises of the daily Libération where she now works: “Even if there were a lot of requests, we had to be able to have a work bubble . There were a lot of letters, support. There were also a lot of things that I didn’t see at that time, like the Hyper Cacher attack on January 9 (…) When I marched in the streets January 11 and I saw a sign ‘I’m Jewish’, I didn’t know what it was because I was still so caught up in the shock and in the process of absolutely wanting to do a new issue of Charlie Hebdo.
While Coco already has the feeling that the terrorists could come back at any moment to “finish the job”, she admits to having “hermetically closed herself” to counter the roaring wave of atrocious memories, emotions, feelings of guilt: “Concentrate on the newspaper, concentrating on work, trying to draw, thinking about something else. It quickly became something that felt good, at least temporarily. I even think it was the only way out, the most vital. “.
Comments collected by Witold Langlois
Adaptation web: Olivier Horner
