Helene Muyal-Leiris was a 35-year-old hair and makeup artist and was just one among the many victims involved in last week's tragic Paris terrorist attacks. Following the trend of open letters and messages commonly found on social media, one person, Helene's husband, took to Facebook to post a powerful status that was directed at ISIS, three days after his wife's death.
Antoine Leiris addressed the terrorist group directly in the second person and pointed out that he will not give them the "gift" of his hatred. The original post was written in French, but it is translated in English below, as reported by The Huffington Post.
Friday night, you took an exceptional life -- the love of my life, the mother of my son -- but you will not have my hatred. I don't know who you are and I don't want to know, you are dead souls. If this God, for whom you kill blindly, made us in his image, every bullet in the body of my wife would have been one more wound in his heart.
So, no, I will not grant you the gift of my hatred. You're asking for it, but responding to hatred with anger is falling victim to the same ignorance that has made you what you are. You want me to be scared, to view my countrymen with mistrust, to sacrifice my liberty for my security. You lost.
I saw her this morning. Finally, after nights and days of waiting. She was just as beautiful as when she left on Friday night, just as beautiful as when I fell hopelessly in love over 12 years ago. Of course I am devastated by this pain, I give you this little victory, but the pain will be short-lived. I know that she will be with us every day and that we will find ourselves again in this paradise of free love to which you have no access.
We are just two, my son and me, but we are stronger than all the armies in the world. I don't have any more time to devote to you, I have to join Melvil who is waking up from his nap. He is barely 17-months-old. He will eat his meals as usual, and then we are going to play as usual, and for his whole life this little boy will threaten you by being happy and free. Because no, you will not have his hatred either.
The post garnered a great deal of attention from all over the world and was shared throughout social media. Leiris even read the message out loud in English to the BBC.
"I didn't know it would touch so much people, and so deeply," Leiris said.
In appreciation for Leiris's strength and bravery, many people online have come forward to contact and support the widower, who is left with his 17-month-old son, according to Sport Act
Leiris, who is a French journalist, lost his wife Helene at the Bataclan theatre.
"They can have all the Kalashnikovs etc, we stand free. We stand with life, with happiness and no they don't win. No. No, we stand. We don't pretend that we are not sad, devastated. No, we are, but we stand," Leiris said in an interview with CNN.
Leiris also mentioned that he had to force himself into writing the Facebook post so that his son, Melvil, could "grow up like a human being being open to the world, like a person who will love what his mother loved: literature, culture in general, music, cinema and pictures."
He added that he spend two days searching every hospital in Paris for his wife with his brother after the attacks too place, all before he had received a call from the coroner telling him that she was dead, The Independent reported.
The Paris shootings resulted in the deaths of 129 people, 89 of which were killed at the Bataclan theatre. Much support and discussion has been raised over the killings, and many people have used social media as a tool to show their angst and display messages of consolation for the sake of finding some closure amid their personal crises.
