Republic or Death! (7 page)

‘La Marseillaise' meant everything to this country when it was written in 1792; everything in 1830, when the then king, Charles X, was overthrown in the ‘Three Glorious Days' uprising (it was brought back as the anthem for a while before the country realised it was still under a monarchy). It meant everything still in 1879, when it became the national anthem for a third time; during the First World War, when German armies advanced across French soil; and during the Second World War, when Germany actually took control of the country. (The collaborationist Vichy government used a song called ‘Maréchal, Nous Voilà!' as its anthem, which is quite a jolly piece of French
chanson
if you ignore the propaganda of the words addressed to its leader: ‘Marshal, we your boys all swear, / to serve you and follow your path'). ‘La Marseillaise' continued to mean something after the war too, when it became a rallying cry to rebuild the country – something to bring out whenever people had had enough of repairing their homes.

But from cycling – and, okay, getting trains – around the country, I'm not sure whether it can be said to carry anything like that meaning now. It's certainly respected – wrapped up with other great clichés of French identity – but fewer people seem to cling to it as they once did. Too many people I met during my trip, your everyday French, said they saw it as much as an overblown piece of fun as anything else and could only um and aah when asked to describe their feelings about it. Yes, it was sung with gusto following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in January 2015, at rallies across the country, but it didn't seem to be in the all-out way it had been before (there are plenty of videos of people singing it where they look more uncomfortable than proud, as if wondering whether by doing so they were playing into an anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment they didn't want to encourage).

The place that hammers home that change to me is the last that I visit in Paris: the Invalides, the home of the French military. It's a huge complex that sits on the south bank of the Seine with both the Tuileries gardens and the Eiffel Tower within sight. The Invalides is a mandatory visit for almost every Parisian child. Around 1.4 million people come here each year to see Napoleon's tomb and it's certainly worth a trip. The tomb sits at the back of the building's chapel, shut off from the church itself to avoid overpowering it. Inside is a monument fit for any of the great religious buildings of the world: St Peter's Basilica, the Taj Mahal, St Paul's Cathedral, Istanbul's Hagia Sophia. A huge red granite tomb sits atop a green plinth. The tomb itself is big enough to house ten men, audacious even for a self-proclaimed emperor. On the floor, a yellow sun spreads out from the bottom of the plinth as if to grace all visitors with his light.

Visitors aren't actually allowed to approach the tomb, of course; they have to circle it, paying their respects by walking past classical pillars and carvings depicting Napoleon's achievements. He didn't just bring liberty to Europe, freeing it from its old bonds of feudalism and religion, these carvings tell you; he also overhauled France's education system, introduced the metric system, and even set up the Legion of Honour to award France's greatest artists, thinkers and soldiers. The room is almost overwhelming in its grandeur. But just a few yards from here, in the chapel itself, down some steps behind the altar, is another chamber. This one is almost pitch black and about as different as you can get from the ostentation next door. It's only about twenty feet long, lit by just a few candles, and with a small white altar at the end. Along the walls are some graves, each marked by a black marble plaque. Behind are some bones, bodies, ashes and in a few cases – morbidly – hearts.

One of the plaques belongs to Rouget de Lisle.

I stand looking at Rouget's plaque for some time. Given how much he and Napoleon hated each other, I can't help but smile at the fact they're now so close. But it does make you feel somewhat disappointed for him: that this is where he's ended up, hidden away in a dingy half-light, forgotten. I've been told I'm the first person to specifically visit his grave since … actually, no one can remember anyone ever visiting his grave.

That said, there are two things you have to know about this resting place. The first is that it might not actually be Rouget de Lisle in there. The rumours are that it's actually a young girl's bones, perhaps those of his own bastard child. His coffin was moved from a cemetery in the Paris suburbs during the First World War, carried in a glamorous carriage and decked in the red, white and blue of the
drapeau tricolore
. It was met by cheering crowds desperate for a wartime morale boost. But the belief among some is that the gravediggers dug up the wrong plot, the coffin's small size being the biggest giveaway.

The second is that whoever's bones they are, they may not stay here long. Rouget's plaque sticks out from the wall, slightly askew, like a painting about to comedically fall off its hook. This is because he's not actually meant to be here – he's meant to be in the Panthéon, the resting place of many of France's great writers and artists. He's not really a soldier, after all; he's a songwriter, and one of the greatest France has ever had, even if he only composed the one great song.

So why hasn't he moved yet? It's politics and bureaucracy, apparently. But I think the real reason is that France doesn't need Rouget, or his anthem, right now. It hasn't really needed them since the 1960s when the country got back on its feet. It doesn't need the violence in the song, the ugliness of it. It doesn't wish to be reminded of the many wars it fought, the countries it colonised. Those few days of post-Charlie Hebdo mourning were simply a blip, when it stirred difficult questions about the country's future as much as it comforted and inspired people.

But I think that situation could change, and when it does Rouget will be moved. Hopefully this won't be because France needs the war song again. Instead I hope it'll be because the French make peace with it, reclaiming it from the far right, so everyone – French-Algerians and Tunisians included – simply see it for what it is: a historical song of hope written at a time when the country needed one. When that happens, no one will worry any more about traipsing his coffin through the streets and the reaction it'll provoke. Instead they'll just quietly move Rouget to the Panthéon, to occasionally be stumbled across by curious visitors.

 

IT'S 24
BAISAKH
in the year 2069 – or it might be 24
Jestha
in the year 2070, I've not quite got a handle on the Nepalese calendar yet, which seems to operate about fifty years ahead of the rest of the world – and I'm sitting in the offices of Nepal's prime minister. They are disappointingly unfuturistic. The Singha Durbar – Lion Palace – sits almost right in the centre of pollution-choked Kathmandu, the only city I've ever been to where the taxi drivers feel the need to wear face masks. If you sneak a glance at it through its iron gates it looks magnificent, with dozens of columns fanning out from behind a long, shimmering pool, rather like the White House if it had been dropped on the site of the Taj Mahal. But up close, any magnificence it once had has long faded. The paint is cracking, a few window panes are missing and sparrows hop along the corridors as if they're used to having them all to themselves.

I'm here to meet Baburam Bhattarai, the prime minister himself (for now at least; Nepal seems to go through them like seasons). He's a handsome fifty-something, with greying, swept-back hair, a thick, brush-like moustache and sunken, inquisitive eyes. Last night, my interpreter, Ram, told me Baburam is the only politician in this country with any intelligence. ‘He's very visionary and ambitious for the nation, a hero for many,' he said. ‘I think my mother would like to marry him.'

What he failed to mention is that just a few years ago Baburam also happened to be the intellectual figurehead behind a Maoist revolution – an armed uprising that dominated Nepalese life for a decade, caused over 15,000 deaths and thousands more ‘disappearances', and led to the overthrow of the country's royal family. It also shattered Nepal's image as that peaceful Himalayan kingdom people visit when they have a midlife crisis and decide they need to climb some mountains. Baburam issued forty-point ‘lists of demands', calling for things like ‘the invasion of imperialist and colonial culture to be stopped' (that meant banning Bollywood movies, as far as I can tell, India having long dominated Nepalese life), and had to live in hiding because so many people wanted him arrested or dead. His revolution was apparently funded through bank robberies and extortion, and intimidated as many people into supporting it as it truly converted. I'm slightly scared that I'm about to shake this man's hand, to be honest.

But the revolution is precisely the reason I've come to meet Baburam, because whenever the Maoists took over a village, one of the first things they did was stop people singing the national anthem, something many schoolchildren had been doing every morning until then. That song was called ‘May Glory Crown You, Courageous Sovereign' and, as the name suggests, it was a one-verse love letter to the then king. ‘Our illustrious, profound, awesome, glorious ruler,' it began,

May he live for years to come,

May his subjects increase,

Every Nepali, sing this with joy.

The Maoists made everyone sing folk songs instead, or, better yet, songs crammed with the words ‘hammer' and ‘sickle'. They even had their own anthem: a bizarre Nepali pop version of ‘The Internationale', the great French workers' song (‘Rise up, damned of the world!'). When they did finally agree peace, deciding to work within the political system after the public started protesting against the king in Kathmandu, one of their terms was that the anthem be changed. If anyone was going to offer me a convincing argument about the importance of anthems today, chances are it'd be Baburam.

Unfortunately, he's late. Three hours, by my watch. I probably shouldn't complain – the prime minister of Nepal's got a lot of important things to do, I'm sure – but he's left me waiting in a windowless, strip-lit office filled with underlings and we seem to have run out of conversation. For a moment, I think about trying to start a discussion about the benefits of Maoism compared to Marxism, Leninism or even Marxist-Leninism, but instead I tell them a story about two friends of mine who visited Nepal right in the middle of the revolution.

Alan and Tricia, a polite middle-aged couple, were trekking in the Himalayas one day in the early 2000s when they stopped to camp for the night on a school field. They'd just set up their tent and were getting ready to cook when two dozen Maoists ran out of the trees straight for them; an equal mix of men and women, all in perfect formation, all in uniform and all with guns pointed straight at the camp. As soon as they reached the tents, they shouted at Alan and Tricia's Nepalese guides, forced them to the ground and searched their pockets for money. Then the female soldiers marched Tricia off. It seemed like minutes passed. It was probably just seconds. Finally, a young commander strode up to Alan. ‘Can I have your money?' he said in English. Alan was terrified – what the hell was happening to his wife? – but at the same time the question seemed strange. Why is he asking for my money rather than just taking it? Alan wondered. So he took a risk.

‘No,' he said. The commander looked confused.

‘Er … Okay, can I have your camera?'

Alan said no to that too. After a lot more of this back-and-forth, the Maoists left with just some food and medical supplies. The couple were about to celebrate the simple fact they were alive when the Maoists came running back out of the woods, guns raised once more. They headed straight for Tricia and she prepared herself for the worst.

‘You are the first woman we've done this to,' they said. ‘Could you tell us how we can improve the experience for next time?'

I finish the story and look around at the staff – all Maoists themselves – who'd been listening intently. They start rapidly talking to each other, the ones who understand English translating for the others, occasionally pointing at me. I expect a few snatches of laughter here and there, but everyone stays stern-faced and I realise what a stupid thing I've done. I've basically spent five minutes calling them incompetent, haven't I? Oh God, they're going to call off the interview. Maybe they'll rough me up a bit before chucking me out. Do they still have guns? They fall quiet then one turns to me. This is it.

‘We know your friends!' he says, breaking into a grin and reaching out to clasp my shoulder. ‘They're famous across Nepal. They're the only ones who ever said “No”. In ten years! You must give us their address so we can send them a letter. You wait until Baburam hears this!'

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