There are no words. That is the cliché. But, there have to be words. That is what yesterday’s attack was about. Silencing our words. Now is the time to cry out. Those who believe in the freedom of expression must shout that we will not be silenced. Mosques across France are calling out for prayers of peace.

There are so many words about yesterday’s events and the world we have created. But today I want to bring you with me to the Place de la République last night, where 35,000 Parisians gathered to show their profound respect for those assassinated and their beliefs.

Getting out of the metro, the quais were disturbingly deserted. I had been expecting a crowd. There was just the regular scene of commuters. Until I got to the exit, where armored CRS officers were directing everyone to use the exit at the other end of the station. That is where the crowd began. A person jam at the sortie, up the stairs and spilling on to the Place.

It had been very cold earlier in the day, but by evening the weather felt almost mild. The sky was an elegant dove grey with amber lights radiating form the buildings in gentle arcs. At 18h37 the place was packed but not quite a sardine tin. I started in the near a kiosk where five people were on chairs, each holding a human sized poster of a black and white portrait of the four victims who had been identified, the fifth person in the middle with a CharlieHedbo sign.

Weaving through the crowd, I made my way to the statue in of the Republique. There was a reason we were meeting here and not the Champs de Mars or the Hôtel de Ville, or an other large space in the city. We were not honoring war, or government, we were there in support of republican ideals, the ideals founded in ancient Greece, the French Republic established after the revolution.

It was a muted crowded, gathered for a minute of silence. As 19h approached, it was like having cotton in one’s ears, with only muffled conversations wafting by. Then there was silence. At 19h01 posters were unfurled from the statue and the crowd broke out into applause before shouting “Liberté d’expression”. These were quiet shouts. An oxymoron, and hard to describe, but most people had come to grieve and mourn and show the terrorist we were not terrified.

There were women with tears streaming down their faces, a young group holding electric panels spelling out “Not Afraid”. While we could not shout, there was a collective need to share a gesture. A group had brought paper lanterns that they lit and released, golden warmth soaring up to the heavens. People started pulling out their pens, holding them in the air, shouting in silence, “We are all Charlie”.

Today there is a call to light a candle in our windows for Charlie Hebdo. There is another gathering at the Place de la République, this time being held by the Mayor of Paris. And just now there was a moment of silence. I am writing this from my local café. The owner turned the lights off and the TV on to news station broadcasting the chimes of Notre Dame, ringing for the full 60 seconds as the chef stopped cooking and we all stood, honoring the words of Charbo, “I’d rather die standing then live on my knees.”

The names of those who were assassinated yesterday defending our right to freedom of expression.

When I was not writing about Monaco these past few weeks, I was putting together the 7th edition of LUXE Paris. My world has become limited to words. By the time my family comes home at the end of the day, I have a hard time putting two of them together to start a sentence. It has become something of an obsession lately. And not just for me, but the whole country was talking about some choice words last week. The words : Madame le président.

Those were the words used by an Assemblyman when addressing the president of a meeting in the French congress last week and the masculinization of her title was so shocking it resulted in a formal reprimand. A rather serious one that included the loss of 1/4 month’s pay. There were regular blurbs reminding us about the slur on every channel. When I asked Em what the fuss was about, she asked what fuss I was referring to. Mr French had heard the reports, but even he had no idea why it had caused such a scandal. In fact, a lot of native French speakers were at a loss to understand what was so insulting about the term.

It is no exaggeration that French is a tough language to master. Beyond the titles, some nouns mean different things depending on the gender. Un oeuvre is a porfolio of somebody’s work, while une oeuvre is a piece of work, like a painting or sculpture (or do I have that backwards? You see how hard it is?) A memory becomes a memoire.

I was actually quite relieved to learn that I am not the only one who struggles with these little details that seem to make big difference. Not only do I feel like incompetent, but it forced Le Figaro newspaper to print an article in French explaining to the French why Madame le présidente is such a slur. Assemblywomen, it would seem, would like their jobs feminized. Just to make things less clear, female government Ministers do not request the same priveledge, so Ségolene Royal is indeed, Madame le Ministre. This is the formula preferred by the Academie Françaises, the official body whose soul existence is to monitor the French language. Quebec, Belgium and Switzerland beg to differ, asserting that by feminizing career titles we are contributing to equality.

And now Sweden has gotten involved introducing the word hen to replace him or her, in the hopes gender differences disappear for good. An idea that would cause a revolution in France!

My accent not withstanding, Monsieur Mustache’s assistant brought out a heavy, canvas bound ledger, dated 1934, the year before the grand in law’s had their first child as French citizens. A loopy scrawl had entered each wedding by date, one after the other for the entire year. Using a clear plastic ruler M Mustache scrolled down page after page aft… arrêt! He had found something. Bringing the awkward witness to the counter, he showed me their names. M et Mme In-Law, French citizens married in the 12th arrondissement before the birth of their daughter who would one day become my mother in-law. The family joke just got funniey! The grand in laws had remarried after being naturalized. The grandmother may have been uneducated and illiterate, but she had been wicked smart, understanding the French and the importance of the paper chase.

A birth certificate does not cite the nationality of the parents, but the marriage certificate made it clear that the two parties were French citizens. I was able to take my files and get official Nationality Certificates for my husband and my girls. Armed with these documents and the paperwork for Nantes, I was ready to submit my dossier.

In a great moment of anti-climax, Madame was not there that Wednesday. I left my file with her colleague, a polish professional, who looked over all the documents and accepted them with a nod. Several months later my husband and I ware called in for an interview.

Like many Parisiennes, Madame is much friendly with men than with women and she was perfectly charming throughout the interview, as I sat there, wanting to do a gloating happy dance to the woman who had informed me I’d never be French. But I didn’t dare, knowing the dossier was still in her hands. The interview was a no brainer old marrieds like ourselves, and we were assured we’d receive confirmation by mail in the weeks to come, but before that Madame asked me a questioned I’d never anticipated and would love to have known was coming so I could have prepared my answer in advance.

– Would to like to françasisé your name?

– França-what?

– Take a French name. It is the law, I must offer you a more French sounding name. It may make your life easier.

She leaned across her desk and whispered the most ironically hypocritical understatement I have ever heard – Sometimes, this country can be difficult for immigrants.

Going from Sylvia to Sylvie hardly sounded like a life changer, so I stayed with what my parents had given me, but had I known, I think I’d be signing off right now as Madame Chanel, that’s Coco to you. Or perhaps I’d have gone with Colette. Marie Antoinette has a certain ring to it…

No more tears for me, I left Madame’s office more determined than ever to prove her wrong. But how? I did some research. Naturalization is registered with the Journal Officiel. I made inquiries, to no avail. I couldn’t find anyone who could help me find what I needed.

My mother-in-law was confused and absolutely certain she’d never been naturalized. She’d been born a French citizen. Over Easter holidays, 6 months into the process, we visited her in Montreal, where he organized a lunch with her brother, hoping he could help us out. A small get together for paperwork turned into a family reunion, the French cousins meeting their Quebecois cousins, the sound of young kids laughing hysterically at one another’s accent rang through out the small airplane hangar where we had gathered. The uncle had flown in that morning with fresh lobster from Maine, we feasted over red and white checked table clothes, a wing of his Cessna 150 above our heads. The wine flowed freely. It was like being on a Soprano’s set.

After lunch, things turned serious as he showed me the little paper work he had found on his parents. There was nothing on the dates they had been naturalized. But, perhaps thanks to the wine, he shared a family joke. As kids, they had always teased the older siblings for being bastards because the parents had married in Paris after having immigrated from Turkey with the older siblings. The thought was hysterical to this troupe of modern Parisians living with their old world parents. Illicit love? Maman et papa? LOL!

But what if it wasn’t a joke? We had the marriage certificate from Turkey, so we knew they had married before immigrating to France, but a few years ago my husband and I had remarried with Elvis in the Little White Chapel in Vegas. Could it be a family tradition? Is it possible the parents had remarried in France?

Back to Paris, back to the Mairie of each of the three arrondissements where the had lived, 5 year old Em by my side because it was a Wednesday and there was no school in France on Wednesday. That is because after The Church struck a deal with the Government after the Revolution. They were ok with the idea of public school, as long as kids had time to go to religious school one day a week. Wednesdays worked for the church and the country developed a habit. By the time my girls were old enough to go to school, no one was sending their kids to religious school, but teachers had grown accustomed to having their day off, and parents were stuck providing entertainment. Em spent a year of Wednesdays hunting paperwork with me.

There was nothing in the 19th, or 11th. I had no choice, but to head to the 12th. I hoped that the grump took his Wednesdays off, as many parents do, but I had no such luck and was soon facing Monsieur and his mustache. He was as horrible as always but he remembered me and was afraid I’d slip into another tantrum, so after a 10 minute lecture, he went off to search from the documents he assured me did not exist. I sat back down on the bench, next to Em, waiting to see if luck would strike twice.

M Mustache assigned the search to an intern and turned to help the next woman in line, a very proper Parisienne.

– Listen, Mommy! He’s being mean to her, too! He’s mean to everyone. He’s mean to everyone! It’s because of your embarrassing accent…

Yes, but does the document exist?

Victory? I had at last found all the papers required on the infamous list written by a certain Madame’s blue fountain pen. I had waited to have all the French papers before getting my US paper work in order, because I knew the American system and its efficiency. I requested marriage licenses and birth certificates for my parents, myself and my children. Everything arrived promptly, then was immediately returned to the State of California to be apostilléd. The process took 7 weeks. In five weeks, I’d have to start all over again.

There is a list of certified translators posted on a larger poster at the Tribunal d’Instance. I dreaded running into Madame, but there was no time to waste. I took down the list of those approved for English to French and started calling before heading home. One translator had quit. Most would need 1 – 3 months just to get to my dossier, a few were exorbitantly expensive. I finally found M SALIN on the rue de Las Cases, in the 7th arrondissement who would translate my documents for a fair price in a timely manner. I went to his office to deliver the papers. It was a wood encased study. A place Sherlock Holmes would have felt at easy, motes of dust dancing in the mid-winter sunlight, a globe, stacks of books spilling over. I was worried my papers would be lost in the mess,but he assured me that all would be well. And it was.

I arranged everything in French plastic sleeves. A sleeve for me, for my husband, one each for our parents, two more for,our girls and I headed triumphantly to the Tribunal d’Instance to file my request for citizenship.

Madame was there with her scowl and fountain pen. I started handing her the documents one by one, as she checked them from the list. When French citizens marry, they are given a Livret de Famille. A family notebook, where everything is recorded. The spouses’ two birth certificates, their marriage license, all the birth certificates of their children. I handed her our Livret de Famille, then the birth certificates and marriage licenses I had spent so much money ordering, apostillé-ing and translating. She took my documents, crumpled them in to a ball shrugging,

— Beh, these, we don’t need. They are already in the Livret.

— But, but, bu…. you told me I had to have these documents from California, and they needed to be apostilléd.

— Oui, but I did not believe you had a Livret. I did not think you had taken care of your papers.

— You knew I had taken care of my papers! You told me to go to Nantes for the copies!

She shrugged, 1000€ in paper work and hours on my time dismissed. A huge grin broke out on her surly face,

— Madame, you can not prove your husband is French.

— Yes, yes, her birth certificate is here. She was born in Paris. She’s French.

— It is not enough to be born in Paris. Look, her parents were born in Turkey. She is not French.

— They were naturalized citizens. They were not born in France, but they were French.

— If they were naturalized citizens, she too had to be naturalized. I need her naturalization papers. I have told you. You will never be French. (Je vous avais dit, vous ne seriez jamais française.)

We’ll see about that…