Paris — This has long been a city of graffiti and of affiches, but of late the messages have been more poignant than is usual. Ambling between the central Place de la République and the Île de la Cité, on which Notre-Dame stands tall, I could not find a single block that lacked a tribute to those lost at Charlie Hebdo. In the windows of the boutiques, on narrow apartment doors, and even on the hundred-foot-tall drapes that hang from the château-esque Hôtel de Ville de Paris, the denizens of the third and fourth arrondissements have adopted a common identity. “Je suis Charlie,” the standard expression declares. Or, among the less narcissistic, “Nous sommes tous Charlie.” On the government buildings the identification is a touch more official: “Paris est Charlie,” proclaim the powers that be. “Charlie Hebdo: Citoyen d’honneur de la Ville de Paris.”
The Monument à la République — a vast tribute in bronze to France’s “Marianne” — has in recent days become a shrine. On its stone base, well-wishers leave their messages and their prayers, each pilgrim coming to register his solidarity in his own style. On the east side, amateur cartoonists have drawn the dead, and one contributor has appended “Killed in combat — for liberty” beneath the caricatures. “Laughter is a revolutionary act,” reads another inscription; “they didn’t have the right to kill you, Charlie.” On an iron support, a prominent offering sums up the theme: “12 dead,” it reads, “and 66 million injured.” A little girl with a pacifier in her mouth takes a broken felt-tipped pen from her anorak and jots down her own tribute. Her mother photographs her for posterity — that she might one day say, “I was there.”
