Neither of these names means anything to me.
“Hello…erm, do we know each other?”
“Not yet. I work with Yann Barthès on the TV show Quotidien. Yann has heard about your story and we’d like to have you and your wife on the show.”
Yann Barthès! The Yann Barthès. Zena and I often watch his show, along with millions of people all over France. He’s a big name in the media world. I don’t hesitate for a moment.
“Of course, we’d be delighted. Do you want to film at our house?”
“No, Yann would like to interview you on set right away.”
Quotidien with Yann Barthès! This is an incredible opportunity. A show with huge ratings, and we’ll be given enough time to explain our situation at length, which hasn’t been possible in my various interviews with M6, CNews, and France 3.
On December 1, Zena and I are in Paris for the show. We’re very well looked after, pampered even, by the whole team, and Yann Barthès comes to see us in our dressing room to put us at ease before we step out onto the set, inevitably full of nerves. The journalist Martin Weill does an introductory piece, summarizing our story up to the point of the verdict, then Zena and I come on stage for the interview with Barthès. It lasts more than ten minutes and he lets us talk about our lives, about what we’ve been through since my arrest in Greece and—more particularly—since the recent trial and news of the verdict. I explain what drove me to go to Greece in the first place, our fear that my in-laws would drown on the crossing from Athens to Italy. Zena mentions the aspects of French law that we researched and that reassured us that no one was prosecuted for helping family members travel to or settle in France. She also describes the simplicity of our everyday lives, like so many other French families: No, we don’t have the money we need to “buy” my freedom (and I still feel the same disgust at the concept) because we have children, a single salary, and a mortgage to pay. Who has thirteen thousand euros lying around these days?
This interview is a turning point in our mission to rally public opinion. In addition to giving us the time to express ourselves fully, the show puts our story in context with a montage of several reports on the migrant crisis in Greece and the Balkan states, and I’m grateful for this very relevant scene-setting. Crucially, though, our appearance on Quotidien produces an exponential rise not only in the number of signatures on the petition that we launched on Change.org in late October but also in the donations to the fund that we set up on Leetchi—a European GoFundMe. In three days we reach forty thousand signatures and the thirteen thousand euros we need to buy my freedom. I can’t describe the happiness Zena and I feel, and this is naturally shared by both of our families. The French authorities may have been slow to come to my aid, but my fellow countrymen came forward swiftly and in great numbers. We’re not alone. And the Greek justice system may not recognize my innocence, but the French people readily uphold it.
20.
A reluctant appeal
The verdict does not come all of a sudden, the proceedings gradually turn into the verdict.
—Franz Kafka, The Trial
On December 5, five days before the deadline for lodging an appeal, the Leetchi fund has reached the thirteen thousand euros that I must pay to the Greek Ministry of “Justice” (I think those quotation marks are essential) to avoid going to prison. I call Mrs. D.
“We’ve got the money together for the daily fine,” I tell her. “Can you tell me how I make the payment?”
“I’ll find out for you but don’t forget there’ll be legal costs to pay too.”
“Yes, that’s fine. How much are they?”
“I’ll say this again, Mr. Pélissier: You should appeal, that’s my advice.”
“I’d rather close this chapter of my life, thanks. I’m not the only person concerned, I have a wife and two little girls, and they’re deeply affected by what’s going on, as you can imagine. We need to move on.”
“As you wish. I’ll go to the court to get the information you need and get back to you.”
I relay this conversation to Zena over dinner. The legal costs will be a maximum of five hundred or a thousand euros—they never go above that sort of sum in France. We’ll find a way to cover them ourselves.
The next day I receive an email from the lawyer with a scan of a document from the courts as an attachment. It is scrawled on by hand and partly illegible. It looks like a restaurant check, and, at first glance, my brain refuses to comprehend the total.
From: Christina D
Sent: Wednesday December 6, 2017 11:10
To: Stéphan Pélissier
Subject: Re: VERY URGENT TRIAL PATRAS
Dear Mr. Pélissier,
I spoke to the courts yesterday about the calculations for your sentence.
I’m attaching them here.
The sum of 14,052.50 euros relates to the Right to
Increase.
At your service.
Christina D.
Attorney at Law
French Honorary Consul
I’m stunned, knocked sideways, incapable of assimilating this latest information. Yes, that really is what’s written on the crumpled piece of paper that I keep studying incredulously. 14,000 euros on top of the 13,000 we were expecting to pay. In total, 27,676 euros, to be precise! How on earth can that be possible?
* * *
—
Nothing. Nothing logical about it, nothing fair, nothing acceptable, and nothing legitimate. A handwritten document for a legal ruling? A lawyer who can’t tell us in advance the total sum we’ll be required to pay? I’m reminded of the Syrian courts and the things that discouraged me from practicing as a lawyer there. In order to succeed in the Syrian legal system, you first need to cultivate your network, preferably by sleeping with judges or other lawyers—something I always refused to do, obviously. As for defendants, it was very simple: They had to pay, slip bribes, and grease endless palms if they were to have any hope of getting out. I wanted to be a lawyer in a country that respects the law, and that’s why I came to France. And now here I am going through this nightmare of corruption and arbitrary judgments with my husband.
* * *
—
I can barely control my anger when I call the lawyer.
“This must be a joke, Mrs. D., it’s ridiculous! What the hell is this twenty-seven thousand euros?”
“There’s the total for your daily fines and added to that is the Right to Increase, a law that was passed in 2007 to apply a tax of 110 percent to each day in prison converted to a daily fine.”
“But you never mentioned this tax, and you obviously knew about it. Couldn’t you have warned us about this as soon as you told me the verdict?”
“Well, I advised you to appeal. There’s still time, but you’ll need to be quick.”
“But damn it, that’s not what I’m asking you. Why didn’t you tell us that we’d have to pay twenty-seven thousand euros instead of thirteen?”
“The situation is very clear, Mr. Pélissier: Either you pay the twenty-seven thousand euros to cover the daily fines plus the Right to Increase, or you appeal. It’s December 7, you need to make up your mind. I’ll wait to hear from you.”
She hangs up, leaving me here with my anger and my questions. One thing’s certain: This incompetent, hypocritical woman won’t be my lawyer a moment longer.
* * *
—
Zena and I are really at our wits’ end. We had completely believed it was all over. Now we’ll be forced to appeal, and the four of us must continue living with this excrutiating anxiety for many more months, perhaps years. And the shame! The shame in telling all those people—loved ones and anonymous strangers—who contributed to our fund. What to say, what to do? “Oops, so sorry, we got our numbers a little wrong, give us more money”? Totally unacceptable. We don’t have time
, anyway. With a very heavy heart, I give Mrs. D. one final instruction: She is to lodge an appeal in my name.
We must also—immediately—shut down the fund so that no one else can pay into it. I go online and receive a slap in the face: “Fund suspended for verification.” I think I’m going crazy. What now?
I email the site’s administrators and someone calls me back the next day to explain what’s going on: A small far-right group has flagged our fund for violating French law. As justification, they cite article 40 of an 1881 law: “No one may open or publicly announce a subscription fund intended to indemnify fines, expenses or damages handed down by legal sentencing in criminal or correctional proceedings, on pain of six months’ imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros, or of one of these two penalties singly.” The simple explanation for the fascist activists’ sudden interest in the law is a number of recent convictions—in the name of this same article 40—of media personalities with links to the far right who appealed to the public when heavy fines were imposed on them. My appeal for donations therefore gives the extreme right a pretext to denounce me. It goes without saying that they’re not happy with the idea of a Frenchman helping Syrians! The man who’s called me is a key figure at Leetchi, and he’s extremely embarrassed.
“You see,” he says, “we’ve suspended several of their funds on this point of law in the past, which is why they now refer to procedural costs, and why they have this sort of crusade against anyone appealing for donations after legal entanglements. It was the only thing we could do with your fund. But at least now you know what to do: Change the name of your appeal for donations and we can unblock it within an hour.”
I immediately alter the wording of the fund so that it doesn’t refer to the daily fines; it’s now for “legal fees and the cost of translating official documents.” Which means that it’s thanks to this fund that I can now hire a new lawyer, a highly qualified one this time, to defend me in my appeal. Leetchi keep to their word: The suspension is quickly lifted on the fund, and I close it down straightaway.
To dispel any doubts, I contact Éric Berger to get an article into La Dépêche as soon as possible. Zena and I apologize to all the donors and explain that the sum raised will be used to pay legal fees, translation costs, and expenses for the appeal hearing. If there is any money left after the appeal, we will split it equally between a charity that helps Syrians and one that helps homeless people in France. We’re keen for this money to have a universal dimension because it was so generously given to us by thousands of people.
I now need to prepare for this new trial and set up my defense with a different lawyer…but most of all I must support my family and be there for Zena and the girls. I really hope the appeal takes place soon; we can’t cope with years of this worrying, with this sword of Damocles over our heads.
21.
Being French!
ZENA’S STORY
So you’re from Syria? That’s great. Are you happy in France? And you don’t miss home too much?” Home? But this is my home. Here in Albi. The town where I live, where I’ve built a house with my French husband, where my French daughters were born and go to school…
But it’s true, Damascus is also home…It was until the war meant I couldn’t stay there, and I still used to spend three weeks’ holiday there every year after I left to study in France. It was always so wonderful to see my family again. Some of my happiest memories are of enjoying tabbouleh and fattoush with my sister Mirvat amid the smell of roses and jasmine in the inner courtyard of a typical restaurant. We’d go there to recharge our batteries after spending a long morning happily getting lost in the arcades and labyrinthine passageways of the big covered bazaar. My sister was much better at bargaining than I was, and we had fun comparing our acquisitons over lunch.
Yes, I’ve been naturalized at last, but I still don’t have the stability of a regular job and I don’t have that integrated feeling of someone who spends time every day with coworkers. I haven’t really been subjected to discrimination but I’ve faced casual racism in the form of disparaging remarks about my country, particularly while I was studying in France. There were little comments like, “Yes, but standards aren’t so high there…” Still, I managed to get a master’s in French law, and I’ve almost finished my thesis, but these comments had a powerful effect on me because I’m always questioning my own merits.
In any event, I can make the most of my life now that I live in France—especially now that my parents are safely here too. I think of my family members who stayed in Syria and I know their circumstances are very different: my grandmother who’s sick and struggles to access the care she needs; my cousin who died in 2013 because in a war-torn country you can easily die of blood loss; and aunts and uncles who are forced to donate funds to the regime just to ensure their own safety. And yes, I was a lawyer, teaching at law school…but I was in a country with no democracy and no freedom of expression, and we hardly even realized because we’d grown up in that world since our earliest childhood. In the 1980s one of my grandfathers, who was a reasonably well-known poet, was denounced as a dissident and he disappeared overnight. My family didn’t try to find him, it was pointless, we knew without really knowing. Four years later he turned up out of the blue on a public garbage dump; he was completely naked, diabetic, almost blind, and he’d lost his mind in captivity. His children did everything they could to care for him until he died shortly after returning home. The family discussed this with no one, not even close friends.
I don’t forget about my origins: Syria will always be in my heart, and I’m keen to pass on my language and culture to my daughters, despite my new nationality. But at the end of the day, I want to live in France, now and forever, as a Frenchwoman. Which is why I wanted to be naturalized as soon as possible. It took eleven years…
* * *
—
When I’d spent five years on French soil I thought I’d be able to apply for citizenship straightaway in 2012, but the answer came back that the time spent studying didn’t count because I had married in the meantime: I could now apply after four years of marriage. Until then I would have to renew my residence permit every year. When I renewed it in 2012, new legislation had come into effect and I had an interview with the OFII to present my case, explain my professional status, and have my familiarity with the French language assessed. I was already bilingual by then so the interview stopped there, but French lessons were set up for other immigrants and these became compulsory if people wanted their residence permits renewed. I also had to attend a compulsory training day in Albi about civil rights in France.
Just before Mila’s birth, in the summer of 2016, I go to the prefecture in Albi determined to apply for French citizenship because I have now been married for four years. At this point I’m told that citizenship services have been “centralized” so I must go to Toulouse. But appointments are made online and every time I go onto the site, I get the message “No more appointments currently available.” I check again as often as possible, two or three times a day, sometimes more. It’s always the same.
Four months.
It takes me four months to secure an appointment.
Four months at a rate of three or four attempts a day.
In preparation for the interview, I start collecting the necessary documents, some of which need to be sent from Syria, which is always very complicated and expensive.
In November 2016 Stéphan, Mila, and I make the journey to the prefectural office and I watch nervously as the woman handling my application silently scrutinizes all the documents I’ve supplied.
“I can’t see the marriage certificate for your first marriage, Mrs. Pélissier…”
“No, but I’ve got the relevant divorce papers, look.”
“Yes, but I need the marriage certificate. This means your application’s incomplete so I won’t register it. Come back when you’ve got everything you need.”
&
nbsp; I mumble a goodbye and stalk out of her office, furious. What’s the point of asking for a marriage certificate for a marriage that’s over? Surely what matters is that I’m not married to two people at once? Either way, I know I won’t have the last word on this so I manage to track down the certificate, at a cost of nearly two hundred euros. Then I spend another three months trying to get my next appointment before returning to the prefectural office, alone this time, in March 2017.
The appointment gets off to a bad start; the woman dealing with my application is extremely unpleasant. She flicks very quickly through my file—she’s clearly done this a lot.
“There’s a document missing.”
“What? No! There can’t be, I checked ten times!”
“Listen, I know my job. Your Syrian police clearance certificate isn’t here.”
But it was there at my previous appointment…I can feel the blood draining from my face. Yes, I took it out of the folder when I reorganized everything into chronological order. I must have left it on my desk. The strain’s too much for me, I break down and cry.
“I can’t take this anymore, your online appointment system is driving me crazy! It’ll take me months to get another appointment.”
And then there’s a miracle: the woman on the other side of the desk becomes a human being.
“I understand. Everyone has the same problem, you know. Listen, as an exception I’ll give you my email address. Once your file’s complete, message me and I’ll see you as soon as possible.”
Let’s hope the third time’s the charm! I’m seen by the same woman in early April, and this time she’s all smiles and even confides in me a little about her own story—because it turns out she too has been naturalized. She registers my application and warns me that it may take a long time to process.
I Just Wanted to Save My Family Page 13