PODCAST
"January 7, 2015, it's cold. It's Luz's birthday, who is late. I went to buy a cake in a bakery, a marbled cake. Cabu does not eat it but he takes a part for the run off to Lila, the dog ". Five years after the killing and on the eve of the opening of the trial, Sigolène Vinson has not forgotten any detail of the attack perpetrated on the premises of Charlie Hebdo. The former lawyer, who then officiated as a judicial columnist for the satirical newspaper, is spared by one of the shooters while at the same time several of her friends around her are murdered.
"At one point, I'm thrown to the ground"
Sigolène Vinson agreed to share this trauma and the long road to resilience that followed in the new podcast of Europe 1 Studio "Le Son de Vie". That day, it's a completely normal editorial conference that begins in the premises of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. "We are talking about Soumission, Michel Houellebecq's new book. It is a debate as there is often in the editorial staff, that is to say that nobody agrees. Until we hear two gunshots, ”she says.
"We look at each other around the table, some get up and wonder what these sounds are, between the noise of a firecracker, a radiator exploding. But it goes pretty quickly. Afterwards, they enter the newsroom and it starts to shoot ", remembers Sigolène Vinson. Around her, the first victims fall and the writer tries to flee. "I think about crawling but actually I'm not crawling. I'm in the room, standing. And at one point I'm thrown to the floor, my back hurts. And I have a very strong feeling that I have been hit by three bullets, I do not know why it is three. But in fact there is nothing, I will only have bruises, "she admits.
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"It's a silence made of absence, it's a silence of death"
Sigolène Vinson is then on borrowed time, taking refuge behind a low wall. After the sound of the first shots, a terrible silence settles. "A real silence like I have never heard. It is a silence made of absence, it is a dead silence. Since people are dead and those who are not pretend to be. , she describes. It's an almost deafening silence and which places us in a parallel dimension. Especially since there is this cloud of powder which gives everything an unreal side as if we had passed from the other side, on the other side of the mirror in Alice in Wonderland. Except that there, it is not very marvelous… Astonishing silence, almost sticky, then maybe I associate it with blood but a true terrifying silence . A silence before men or after men, when there will be nothing more or there was nothing. There, it is that silence.
Then, Sigolène Vinson hears footsteps and two more shots. Mustapha Ourrad, the editor of the newspaper, has just died. The killer is then facing the young woman. "I am looking at him because he is looking at me. I am not going to run away from the exchange, especially if this exchange can save my life. Even if at that point, I gave up on living and to exist. I think I'm going to die. And I agree with that. But he keeps his word, he doesn't kill me. " The Islamist terrorist says to spare her because she is "a woman" and leaves, ordering her to read the Koran.
Sigolène Vinson then calls the fire department. This sound of sirens, it will take a long time before she can endure them again. Here begins his path to resilience.