Armenian-American professor Mark Moogalian lives in Paris, where he teaches English at Sorbonne University. His unhurried lifestyle flows like the river Seine, in whose waters he parks his houseboat. But on August 21, 2015 Mark’s portrait adorned the front pages of newspapers all over the world. That fateful day Mark was one of the heroes who risked his life to disarm a terrorist wielding a Kalashnikov on the Thalys train en route from Amsterdam to Paris.
This is the story of a true hero whose courage is matched only by his modesty. Mark, a charismatic, middle-aged man, lives on a houseboat anchored on the Seine in the western part of Paris with his wife Isabel and his dog Benny. The boat’s rhythmic rocking transports its residents to some faraway place, free of time constraints and city bustle – a refuge Mark and Isabel created that became their source of inspiration.
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Marc and his wife Isabelle practice in the recording studio on their houseboat |
Mark Moogalian was born on April 24 (a significant date for all Armenians), 1964 in the city of Durham in North Carolina. He grew up in Virginia, on the U.S. east coast, with five of his siblings.
In 1908 Mark’s grandfather Harry, who had just turned 14, was forced to leave his native Kharberd in the Ottoman Empire and to sail for the New World. “He stood next to one of the passengers and pretended to be her son,” Mark explains. The ship sailed for Rhode Island, where Harry settled and later married an Italian immigrant from Naples. A year later Harry was joined by his sister, who married an Armenian. The whole family then moved to the town of Hopewell in Virginia, which had an extensive and tightly knit Armenian community. “The Armenians worked very hard, they wanted a better life at any price,” says Mark.
Mark Moogalian’s childhood was idyllic. He grew up in a quiet American middle-class suburb. After high school Mark was accepted to the University of Richmond, where he first encountered the social inequality that so often plagues large American cities. But his life’s real lessons awaited him off the university campus.
Back when he was still very young, Mark fell in love with music. He wrote songs and played guitar and trumpet in several bands. “I was something of a front man,” he recalls. His main sources of pride are the two bands he created, Look Like Bamboo and Java Man. He was head over heels for the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Brian Eno, but never performed covers of their songs on stage. It’s possible that had Mark stayed in New York or moved to California, he could've had an excellent career in music. But fate had it differently.
Ever since he was little, Mark dreamt of visiting Europe, especially France. He would often look at photographs of the Old World’s valleys and rivers. At age 26 he finally ended up in London, where he played in pubs and on the streets. Later that year he moved on to Paris, and though he had no money, he carried a guitar and a heart full of hope.
Paris rain dances
Once in Paris Mark stayed at cheap hotels and student dorms. He slept outside and earned money as a street musician. At first he couldn’t say two words in French and ate whatever he could find, putting himself at the mercy of kind people who sympathized with the young musician’s plight.
One autumn evening, while searching for a place to sleep, Mark found himself in the Bois de Boulogne, on the shore of the river Seine. There, he noticed a deserted barge. “It had amazing acoustics! As if I was in the belly of a whale,” he remembers. The houseboat’s owners allowed Mark to stay as long as he helped them repair it. “In America, musicians didn’t shy away from construction work,” Mark explains. Plus, he already had some relevant experience.
One of his French friends invited Mark to perform at a bar near Place Pigalle. Slowly, he began finding his way around Paris and settling down, though his living conditions remained spartan. “For almost a year I had no running water, so I had to wash outside with the help of a coffee machine,” he says. Five years later Mark went back to the United States and tried to find work as a French teacher, but failed and returned to France for good.
Mark temporarily suspended his music career in order to concentrate on teaching English. It was only after their wedding in 2003 that, together with his wife, he established a new band called Secret Season. Today, the band has already released four albums.
The day everything changed
On August 21, 2015, Mark and his wife Isabel were returning to Paris from Amsterdam, where they went on vacation, by Thalys train. Mark was on his smartphone, reading an article about the Super Bowl. From the corner of his eye he noticed a man who entered the bathroom compartment with a big suitcase on wheels. “At first I didn’t think he was very dangerous,” Mark says. To make sure everything was well, he got up and headed toward the bathroom. That’s when saw the young man exit with a Kalashnikov rifle in his hands. He had a rucksack strapped to the front of his body. “He had lots of bullet cartridges. The first thing I thought was, ‘This is impossible; this is some sort of joke! Somebody decided that Halloween comes early this year!” remembers Mark.
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Mark and Isabelle |
One of the passengers tried to grab and disarm the terrorist. Mark rushed to help. It all happened very fast. “I turned back and I saw Isabel, and I realized that if I didn’t do anything, she would be the first victim. I went to her and quietly said: ‘Get away, this is serious.’ While the terrorist wrestled with the passenger, Mark grabbed his rifle and was able to make a few steps, shouting: “I got the gun!”
Then his vision blurred. The terrorist shot Mark in the left shoulder with a hand gun. Mark fell down. “First I heard this uproar and then felt as if I was floating on air. It felt as if a ping pong ball had exploded inside me,” he recalls. The bullet fractured two ribs, grazed an artery and exited through his neck.
“I thought that was the end of me. When the terrorist came toward me to take back the gun, I was sure he would kill me. I closed my eyes and played dead — that’s what you do if you run into a bear in the woods of Virginia. The world was going dark, but I saw three Americans bring the guy down.”
Mark fainted. “I saw my mother, who died two months before that. It looked like a 1960s movie: black and white images, my mom doing dishes, wearing the glass frames that were in vogue back then. I recognized the house of my childhood. And then I heard a voice: ‘Open your eyes! If you don’t open them now, you’ll never do it!’ So I did, and everything was back: the bustle and pain and the uproar. It was only then that I began to realize what had happened. Several minutes later Isabel, who’d been hiding behind the seat, told one of the Americans, Spencer, that I’m bleeding to death. The train stopped and slowly began to move backward.”
Spencer Stone, the American soldier who ultimately disarmed the terrorist, knew some first aid techniques. He put pressure on Mark’s wound with his finger in order to stop the bleeding. He held it there the whole time it took the train to get to the Arras station. “Spencer thought I would die, he later said so in an interview with some U.S. newspaper. But he didn’t tell me that back then. I realized that I would survive only when I saw a doctor approach me,” Mark remembers.
While at the hospital, Mark received hundreds of messages, both from his friends and relatives and from complete strangers. What touched him the most? A call from the President of the French Republic. “While we spoke, I was so afraid of making some mistake in French. It was an amazing moment,” Mark remembers, adding: “One Saturday morning, the president held a wonderful reception for myself and Isabel at the Elysee Palace. We had a great time.”