Thank You for This Moment

by Valérie Trierweiler

  It didn’t matter that I knew I was not the only person whose reputation had been smeared. I remember Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s tears at the handover of power. At one point or another the foreign First Ladies had all had to put up with ill treatment at the hands of the press. There were recurrent rebukes regardless of the country and personality of the First Lady in question. The spouses of heads of state are almost always suspected of meddling in their husbands’ affairs, to have ambition for two and to unduly spend public money. Their reputation is tarnished by rumour.

  One of the First Ladies confessed that it pained her to hear people say she had ‘got her claws into a President’ because she was twenty years younger than her husband… At least no one could accuse me of being attracted to power! My partner wasn’t even President of the General Council when I met him.

  One evening, the wife of the Japanese Prime Minister Abe had me in stitches with the story of how she was lambasted for supporting one of her friends in the Senate elections. Hearing about her misfortunes consoled me somewhat about my regrettable tweet. She told me with great humour how every time she expressed her views publicly, the media unleashed its venom. In fairness, she didn’t think twice about saying she was opposed to nuclear power, when her husband’s decisions were leading the country in the opposite direction…

  I developed a friendship with the wife of former Malian President Traoré. Though I no longer have an official role, Mintou Traoré continues to regularly check in on me. She was the one who welcomed me to Mali on my first solo trip in May 2013. At the same time, the Malian President was in France with François. There was something symbolic about that: men go out onto the military field, while we women are in the humanitarian field. We flew to Gao in a military Transall plane with the members of Operation Serval. It was not a world I was familiar with and I was struck for the first time by the true nobility of the members of the military. I was moved to see them on the field, at the service of a population traumatised by jihadist acts of violence.

  We visited a school that had nothing: no tables or chairs, no books, no pencils. We brought textbooks. We also visited young mothers who had just given birth in the resourceless local hospital. One of them was resting after delivering twins, a girl and a boy. They had only been born two hours previously and did not yet have names. Mintou placed them in my arms and with an air of authority she declared: ‘He’s François and she’s Valérie!’ This got a laugh out of everyone. It is one of my favourite pictures of that trip. My shiny eyes hint at the tears of emotion I am holding back.

  If those two are really called François and Valérie, I only wish that a happier fate is in store for them than ours…

  Everywhere I went, I had to say a few words, sometimes even make a short speech. It wasn’t something I knew how to do so I improvised. At my own modest level, I began to understand the pleasure that François felt in experiencing such moments.

  After the visit, we had lunch with the soldiers and their commander under a tent at the military camp, in heat of at least 45 degrees Celsius. A storm was brewing, torrential rain started pouring down. Everyone was running around frantically, as it was the first rain of the season. The journalists were amused. They said I had acquired François’ power: to make it rain wherever he went – as it had on his inauguration day! The elements really were against us, the wind rose and truly showed us what it could do – we had to move our departure forward.

  I visited the hospital and orphanage in Bamako. What I saw there will haunt me forever: dozens of infants suffering from respiratory distress or extremely premature newborns. Their chances of survival were in jeopardy.

  Once we had returned to France, a medical mission was sent out to try to understand why there were so many infants with serious medical conditions in that hospital.

  Another sad sight that will stay with me is the terrible conditions disabled children were faced with at the crèche: they were all sat in a row on the floor of a squalid corridor, irrespective of their various disabilities.

  My goal during my trip to Mali had been to ask the government to reconsider the cancellation of adoption agreements, a change of policy affecting seventy French families. There was a new law in Mali banning adoption by foreigners, and because it was retroactive, families who had celebrated the good news of a child on the way had seen their hopes cruelly crushed. Before leaving France, had talked several times to a French organisation22 working to break the adoption deadlock in Mali. I had seen the distress of the French families involved and had promised to help them – with the President’s green light. Unfortunately, once I got to Mali, it became clear that we would have to wait until after the Malian elections.

  With the help of the wife of the new President, I went back on the offensive. Things are now moving forward – slowly but surely. The families still give me news of what is going on. I have not given up hope.

  At a press conference just before we left Mali, a journalist asked Mrs Traoré to comment on France’s commitment to Mali. ‘When a man goes to bed,’ she replied, ‘he has not yet made a decision. He reaches it with the woman who sleeps next to him. And the woman he sleeps with is Valérie.’ In the highly charged atmosphere of the press conference, her explosive answer made us all laugh and dispelled some of the tension.

  Mali is a land bursting with emotion. I understood the emotion François had felt when he went there in his role as the army’s Commander in Chief after the French military operation. But not when he publicly claimed it was ‘the happiest day in [his] political career’. I wasted no time messaging him to say he should feel ashamed of himself: ‘If the happiest day in your political career is not the day that the people of France made you President, then they were wrong to do so.’ I admit I didn’t humour him that day. But was there still anyone who really dared to confront him – among his pack of courtesans, of ‘complimenters’? Regrettably, there was not.

  François had become unable to handle criticism. It was easier to keep your mouth shut than to be faced with a barrage of abuse.

  Late spring 2014…

  Summer of 2014 is drawing closer and rumours are circulating that Hollande and Gayet will soon make their relationship official. They are allegedly still seeing each other. François makes the first move – by text message – assuring me for the umpteenth time that the rumour is just that, a rumour, he swears that the affair is over, that it is me he wants back and the girl means nothing to him.

  I have heard it all before – unfaithful men have been singing that tune since time immemorial.

  Every single day, François asks to see me. The pressure never lets up. I have stopped answering. Because I do not know where the boundary lies between his truths and untruths, I cannot rebuild the small nugget of trust without which, as I discovered, all human relationships hit a wall.

  For the third time, François promises he will publicly deny that he is involved with the actress. For the third time, he fails to do so. Is it because he is afraid he will end up alone that he has a finger in every pie? Is he keeping communication channels open with me because my freedom scares him?

  He did eventually get around to refuting the wedding rumour, on 12 August, his sixtieth birthday – which he asked me to spend with him, adding: ‘You are the one who should say “I do” to me.’

  I HAVE TO turn over to a new chapter. A beautiful quote by Tahar Ben Jelloun, ‘The silence of your loved one is a quiet crime’, keeps me going. I know it by heart and I repeat it to myself every day.

  I cannot say which of the two of us is suffering more. He tries to find out how I am, through friends or through my youngest son, whom he still sees. He wants to know what I am up to, who I see, what I think. He asks everyone why I do not want to see him any more. When we had dinner together for the first time after the separation statement was issued, he said: ‘I won’t mention your book, because I don’t want you to think that I am coming back to you because of that.’

  I do not want to hear about his life, I do no
t want to know what is going on at the Élysée. My TV is always off and I do not read the papers. Every news stand I walk past is like a radioactive site to me – it is full of noxious poison.

  The world I lock myself in gets smaller and smaller, it is a fragile little bubble. I try to fight back – but I have lost the frantic, desperate energy of the first few weeks. Apparently it is known as the after-effect. As if the first effect did not hurt enough. Throw more my way. One cheek. And then the other. Two slaps in the face. Just to even things out. I barely had time to get back on my feet before I took another blow.

  François hurt me deeply. I admit I do sometimes miss him, I miss the past, I miss our love, our carefree passion, the hours when everything seemed easy, when the colours were more vivid and the air was easier to breathe. But the past never comes back. Or when it does, it comes back in painful bursts that overwhelm me and threaten to crush me: the past is tenacious and it refuses to die – especially the pre-Élysée past when François was a different man. Or rather when he was himself.

  His messages talk of love. He writes that I am his whole life, that he is nothing without me. Are his messages heartfelt? Does he even believe what he himself writes? Or am I the latest tantrum of a man who cannot bear to lose? He writes that he will win me back, as if I was an election. I know him well now: perhaps he believes that if he manages to win me back, to repeat an impossible feat, he may also manage to win back the heart of the French people – even though he is the most unpopular President of France’s Fifth Republic.

  All my trust in him has died. For the French people, of course, it is a whole other matter. I can only bear witness to the fact that power changes people. I cannot recognise the François I loved with wild abandon in the man who treated me with such contempt and now reserves that contempt for his collaborators. Day after day, under the weight of his responsibilities, I saw him lose his humanity, drunk on power, incapable of empathy.

  It struck me at dinner with his inner circle from the Voltaire year of the École Nationale d’administration: they had been waiting for power for thirty years. They finally had it, and they felt like demigods, full of arrogance.

  I also remember a comment he made during a walk which really shocked me. We were talking about his Foreign Affairs Minister, Laurent Fabius. A man who, in 1987, had become France’s youngest ever Prime Minister, at thirty-seven.

  ‘It’s awful for him, he’s wasted his life,’ François said.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ I asked.

  ‘He never became President.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean he wasted his life,’ I protested. ‘He seems happy in what he does, and with his partner … What about you, are you happy?’

  ‘No.’

  My days go by slowly, the President’s text messages mark time.

  One.

  Three.

  Five.

  I can’t help but read them. I end up caving in and I answer his last message. He responds immediately. The whole song and dance all over again, on an endless loop. We are going nowhere with these messages and the whole thing exhausts me. His words have no more value for me. I put an end to it. Until next time. I want to get some distance from François, whom I do not understand any more, and from the Élysée – I never even drive past it these days, I would sooner make a detour.

  I am prepared to go just about anywhere to escape from this knot of sadness. Which is part of the reason why I immediately agree when Paris-Match asks me to do an assignment in Nigeria to try to trace the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram. As it is, every day I try to rally public opinion for their cause – with my own means, mostly via my Twitter account or through media coverage. When my newspaper suggests the reportage, I reply that I am prepared to leave that very second, if necessary – quite literally. But Nigeria blocks the project by denying us visas.

  In fact, I have only just returned from a trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Dr Mukwege to provide support to street kids and women who have been victims of rape. The thought of going away again fills me with newfound energy.

  As was the case on my trip to Haiti with Secours populaire, meeting the most destitute reminds me of what really matters.

  Humanitarian work is sometimes criticised for the media coverage it comes hand in hand with. Who is right and who is wrong? A few years ago, reporting for Paris-Match, I visited a refugee camp in Ethiopia along with opera singer Barbara Hendricks. For several years, this charismatic and talented woman put her fame at the service of humanitarian causes. Barbara Hendricks was born in a segregated America and it had left a permanent mark on her – as if she had been branded. She turned that humiliation into strength. She moved mountains with the sheer power of her beliefs. She cannot bear the idea that a child can be born without a fair chance. We both share that hatred of injustice and my experience as a First Lady only confirmed to me that these trips are useful. They help focus energy and give local teams muchneeded and much-deserved visibility.

  With that in mind, I have a meeting with the heads of Action Contre la Faim. We discuss the possibility of a visit to a country ravaged by war before the end of the year.

  Dangerous areas do not scare me. I did not bat an eyelid at the thought of travelling to Nigeria.

  Perhaps it is fair to say that I am a bit reckless. My life has lost its meaning. Without my children, I do not know what I would have become. I need to find my way again, and to do so I am more than willing to take a few risks.

  During the meeting, we discuss my trip to India back in January, only one day after the separation statement François Hollande dictated to the AFP. One of the representatives from Action Contre la Faim was on that trip with me. She praises me warmly for my courage: ‘You resisted media pressure and were very giving. I have not seen many people like you in the field.’

  I went on that trip to India with my friend Charlotte Valandrey, an actress who is HIV positive and has had a heart transplant. The word ‘survival’ has real meaning to her – something she has talked about in several moving books. She was there to tell me how to recover and regain control over myself. Her words soothed me.

  In January, I had been thrown to sharks in international waters, as if I was completely worthless. Refusing to cancel my trip to India was a way of showing the small circle of people celebrating my eviction from the Élysée that I still had dignity. That I did not deserve François Hollande’s scorn. I also wanted to show François that I would cope without him.

  It was not just my friend Charlotte: many more shared their strength with me. The joy of the children of the Bombay slums was communicative. A fortnight ago, a magazine ran a picture of that trip. I am sat cross-legged on the floor with a little girl on my lap. My hand rests on her little leg and her hand rests on mine. In that moment, Paris truly was million miles away. I was happy to be there.

  I also remember a trip to South Africa when I was First Lady and how the orphanage children made me dance with them. I was more than willing. When it comes to dancing to frenzied beats, I have never needed to be asked twice!

  The same thing happened in Burundi, where I had been invited to attend a conference by Mary Robinson. In the end, the musicians encouraged me to dance along to the sound of their drums.

  Generally speaking, during official trips, I was always happy to get a chance to escape from the ‘Madame programme’. When a visit to a museum or sightseeing was suggested, I declined. I wanted to get off the beaten track.

  What I most remember of my trip to Burundi, and of an earlier trip I went on alone as First Lady, in July 2013, is the face of a little boy called Olivier. I met him when I was visiting a centre for young boys living on the street. The centre kept them for six months and helped them reintegrate in society. During my visit, the boys and I sat in a circle. Only three of them spoke, Olivier was one of them. Some of those boys had something very special, you could tell straight away, and again Olivier was one of them.

  ‘I don’t want to go and live on th
e street again,’ he said, ‘I want to study, I want to become a doctor. What will happen to me if I go back on the street?’

  After the visit, I asked the wife of the ambassador for a favour. I asked her to keep an eye on how Olivier was doing – just until I could find a solution for him. Two days after I got back to Paris, a childless couple, both of them doctors, agreed to finance his education and board with a family in Burundi. That way, Olivier would not be uprooted and could fulfil his dream. Over the last two years, Olivier has made amazing progress in school. The couple sponsoring him speaks to him every week on Skype. If all goes well – fingers crossed – in eight years he will come to France to study medicine.

  Too many children do not have the same luck. In only twenty months at the Élysée, I saw countless children’s centres and hospitals filled with sick patients. It is enough to make you feel completely powerless. The efforts you are making feel like a drop in the ocean. Until you remember that the ocean is just that: accumulated drops. Little by little, drop by drop, we can do more. A single drop of water makes a difference – and it is missed if it is not there.

  There is Olivier, but there is also Solenne, whom I met through ELA,23 an organisation sponsored by Zinedine Zidane. The head of ELA was the first person to ask for my help, right after the ‘La Rochelle tweet’ – at a time when I felt like I had caught cholera and was so contagious no one wanted to get anywhere near me. He explained that leukodystrophies were a group of rare genetic disorders, which cause a terrible and irreversible degeneration of the nervous system.

  I agreed to do a spelling test in a school, to help raise awareness of the disease and encourage donations. In Year 10 of a school in the thirteenth arrondissement in Paris, I read out the dictation in front of a swarm of photographers and cameras. Solenne was there in her wheelchair, along with her parents. She was a pretty little blonde girl with a sense of humour. The students in the first row were crying. I held my own tears back because, after meeting many parents of disabled children, I knew that what they wanted was support, not compassion.