On January 7, 2015, around 10:30 A.M., few people in France were prepared to say “I am Charlie.” We had entered a new age and couldn’t do anything about it. The paper was no longer important, except for a few loyal readers, for Islamists, and for all kinds of more or less civilized enemies, ranging from boys in the suburbs who didn’t read it to the perpetual friends of the wretched of the earth, who liked to call it racist.

The dead were almost holding hands. The foot of one of them was touching the stomach of another, whose fingers lay on the face of a third, who was leaning toward the hip of the fourth, who seemed to be staring at the ceiling, and all of them, as never before and for evermore, became, in this arrangement, my comrades.

The man who walked toward the back of the room and toward me fired a bullet and said: “Allah Akbar!” He fired another bullet and repeated: “Allah Akbar!”