In the wake of tragedy it would be understandable to lash out in anger at perpetrators who have caused you immeasurable pain.
But Antoine Leiris, a Frenchman whose wife was killed in the Bataclan massacre last Friday, has written a powerful and defiant message to the terrorists responsible for taking his wife’s life, and has vowed he and his young son will not give them the satisfaction of hatred.
In a note on Facebook Leiris, a 30-year-old journalist, wrote: “On Friday night you stole away the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hatred.
“I do not know who you are and I don’t want to know, you are dead souls.
“If the God for whom you kill so blindly made us in His image, each bullet in my wife’s body would have been a wound in his heart.”
Leiris, who met and fell in love with his 35-year-old wife Hélène Muyal 12 years ago, continued: “So no, I will not give you the gift of hating you. You want it, but to respond to hatred with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that made you what you are.
“Of course I’m devastated with grief, I will give you that tiny victory, but this will be a short-term grief. I know that she will join us every day and that we will find each other again in a paradise of free souls which you will never have access to.”
The letter, which has been shared more than 150,000 times since Tuesday night, concluded: “We are only two, my son and I, but we are more powerful than all the world’s armies.
“In any case, I have no more time to waste on you, I need to get back to Melvil who is waking up from his afternoon nap.
“He’s just 17 months old; he’ll eat his snack like every day, and then we’re going to play like we do every day; and every day of his life this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom.
“Because you don’t have his hatred either.”
Thank you, Antoine.
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