Coatsworth was touring Paris with Lemain and Lemain’s mother after 11:30 a.m. when Lemain received a news alert on his phone.
It warned of a shooting in Paris.
“When you hear that, it’s not really that shocking because North Paris is like South Chicago,” Coatsworth said. “I just assumed, we all did, that it was just, you know, ‘Oh God, more violence.’”
Coatsworth said because Lemain and his mother weren’t concerned, he wasn’t either.
That shooting would turn out to be the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, which shocked the French people and put the city on alert for three days.
The two attackers killed 12 people. Paris was put on maximum alert with the deployment of an ?additional 500 police officers into the streets, according to the BBC.
After receiving the alert, Coatsworth continued touring Paris with Lemain and his mother before getting on a three-hour train ride back to Marseille, where his fiancé and family live.
By the time they reached Marseille, everything was different since the initial incident in Paris.
“It was like a police state,” Coatsworth said. “It was very intense because that is a really culturally diverse area, too. There were police everywhere in Marseille, and bomb threats being called in to Marseille.”
Coatsworth initially didn’t remember the magazine until his fiancé reminded him that he had seen it a few days before.
While walking past a newsstand, Coatsworth had seen the cover of the magazine and thought it was appalling and vulgar, he said. What he didn’t realize at first was the tradition of political cartoons and vulgar humor that remains part of the culture in France.
“It’s a huge keystone in a culture that is obsessed with politics,” he said.
Coatsworth, who studied abroad in France from August 2013 to July 2014, has studied the country and culture closely through classes and his volunteer teaching work for the North African population near Marseilles.
During his study abroad, he was introduced to Lemain by a German friend, and the two later became engaged.
Lemain and Coatsworth agree the importance of politics goes back all the way to the first French Revolution. Coatsworth said people in France make fun of people of all ethnicities and backgrounds.
“It’s how they get through,” he said. “French politics has never been calm.”
But after the attack at Charlie Hebdo, Coatsworth said no one made jokes or connections to Islam.
“The day after, when everything was totally out in the open, everyone was saying it’s important not to connect these two men to their religion,” he said. “I remember thinking that was really groundbreaking.”
Being in Paris during the attack was like reliving the Sept. 11 attacks, Coatsworth said. He was walking alone through the Paris on the Sunday after the attack, and he said it was a different feeling than when he was there before.
“I’ve never seen the French so standoffish,” Coatsworth said. “Everyone was so glazed over, like zombies. I hated to leave in that moment because I’ve never seen that. They’re snobby, proud people, you know the French, and they were completely reduced. It definitely had an impact on me.”
