the essential
Economist, teacher, writer, journalist, Toulouse Bernard Maris was assassinated in the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris where he signed under the pseudonym Uncle Bernard. His daughter Gabrielle, production manager at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, tells of this father of whom she only has good memories.
How do you feel as the anniversary of your father’s death in the Charlie Hebdo offices approaches?
I can’t believe that 10 years have passed. These attacks of 2015 seem so close to me. Birthdays are always a little more painful because we think more about the attack while the rest of the time, I simply think about my father, without thinking about the circumstances of his death.
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Do you feel accompanied or disturbed in your mourning by these commemorations?
It’s complicated because we, the families of the victims, have a personal history which is intersected by the history of our country. So, we have to learn how to deal with this telescoping. At first it was difficult. Now, I am rather, on the contrary, very grateful for the people who continue to think and make tributes, to think of them and to make them still exist. It touches me a lot.
What do you have left of your father?
Lots of images, lots of laughter and smiles. My father was someone who knew how to point out the little moments when we were happy. He had a phrase that he always said when the two or three of us were together as a family, he said “Who better than us?” “. At the time it made me laugh. Today I love this sentence, it stays with me. And I still have this ability that he passed on to me, namely to identify the moments when we are happy, when we feel good, which are good moments. And I have many, many with him. That’s all I have, I would even say.
What is the most important thing he passed on to you?
Exactly, maybe that, enjoying the present moments. When we were in the forest or on the balcony, he would say to me “Look how beautiful the sky is” and we could look at the sky like that or at the trees whose names he knew all. He loved being on Earth, being alive. And he knew how to do it. He knew how to be part of the living.
And the one he left you?
I still have one of his press cards in my wallet. It evokes what he died for but also what he loved to do. He was a very good teacher, he loved teaching, but his childhood dream was to be a journalist. And he was very happy. I think it was a great joy for him to be able to write. Before Charlie Hebdo, he had written for Le Monde.
You also, two years after the attack, wrote a book which is a message of love for your father without ever mentioning the terrorists. For what ?
I said to myself, I won’t talk about them, but quite simply because I didn’t want to bother with them. I testified at the trial. Those who murdered my father are dead but I met their accomplices. It’s very disturbing because they are part of humanity like us, with the same problems as us, with the same difficulties as us. What makes one choose one side or the other, whether one chooses to become a terrorist or not to be a terrorist, I don’t know? But I don’t want to bother with them.
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How do you feel when you hear that an attack has just taken place?
I think of the victims and their families. I tell myself that they had this bad luck, that I would have liked to have spared them that.
You work in culture. Do you think it can change the world or maybe calm it down?
So, my father would have said, I think, that art can save the world. He placed artists and researchers at the top of his personal pantheon. I think that culture can do a lot and that art liberates us. He shows us ways we had not imagined. It also upsets us in a good way. And I hope this helps change the world just a little bit.
What will you do on Tuesday for the tenth anniversary of the Charlie attack?
Commemorations will take place in Toulouse but not Tuesday morning. So, I will work. And in fact, there will be a presentation of a model of an upcoming opera at the Théâtre du Capitole. It’s magnificent because we have a director and a team who come to explain their project to us and talk to us about art and their personal commitment. Often, they are committed people. So, I will think of my father who would be happy for me. He would be happy to know that I do this. He would think I’m lucky.
