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beautiful tribute
"You stole the life of an exceptional being. The love of my life, the mother of my son."
Antoine Leiris has written a powerful message to those who murdered his wife in Paris.
“If this God for which you kill blindly made us in his own image, each bullet in my wife’s body would have been a wound in his heart.”
A DEFIANT FACEBOOK post by the husband of one of the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks has gone viral.
Antoine Leiris lost his wife Helene in the attack on the Bataclan theatre, but has vowed to her killer that he would “not grant you the gift of my hate”.
Instead, Leiris speaks about his 17-month-old son Melvil and promises to raise him to be “happy and free”.
The post has been shared over 190,000 times since it was posted on Monday, with the young father also reading out an English language version of his words to BBC News.
He begins his message by saying:
On Friday night you stole away the life of an exceptional being. The love of my life, the mother of my son, but you won’t have my hatred.
He speaks about finally being able to see her since her death, recalling how he fell in love with her:
I saw her this morning. Finally, after many nights and days of waiting. She was just as beautiful as she was when she left on Friday evening, as beautiful as when I fell madly in love with her more than 12 years ago.
He continues and ends his message by speaking about his son:
We are only two, my son and I, but we are stronger than all the armies of the world. In any case, I have no more time to waste on you. I need to get back to Melvil who is waking from his afternoon nap. He’s just 17 months old, he’ll eat his snack like every day, and then we’ll play like we do every day. And every day of his life this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom. Because you don’t have his hatred either.Antoine Leiris.
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