Couturier John Galliano created his label at the age of 24, Jean-Paul Gaultier launched his first collection at the same age. Sami Nouri, a 26-year-old Afghan who lives in Paris, doesn’t want to wait either. “At 30, I must have succeeded! » What is it to be successful? “To have made my creations a brand known and recognized worldwide. » Nothing less. Sami is a young man in a hurry to please and to do. In his apartment on 11e borough, a rack loaded with clothes faces the front door. The living room is transformed into a workshop, sewing mannequins enhanced with bolduc alongside others laden with jackets, suits and dresses.
Two small tables are cluttered with corsets, stiffeners and feathers. A shelf is overflowing with buttons and threads. At the heart of the mess, a framed photo of his mother, Maryam, and sister, Zara, survivors like him. All fled Afghanistan and the fury of the Taliban, then the Iranian police, in an interminable journey. An odyssey marked by fear, separation and death. Opposite the photo, on a work table sits the object that saved them: a sewing machine.
It was in Mazar-e Charif, in northern Afghanistan, under the yoke of the Taliban, that Sami Nouri was born in 1996. “It’s not the best place to start in life”, he points out. Her father, Abas Nouri, is a merchant. He refuses the racketeering of the Taliban: his eldest son, Mustapha, is kidnapped in retaliation. When the young man is returned to his parents, he dies of his injuries in his mother’s arms. The family then decides to leave the country, to go west. Sam is 5 years old.
“Go to a free country or die”
The Nouri cross the country, cross the border. “My father wanted us to be safe, and Iran was not so bad. » In Iran, with the savings he was able to save, Mr. Nouri buys a sewing machine and starts tailoring. Orders are pouring in. Days, months, years pass. But the family remains recluse between four walls: they remain clandestine. In this desolate universe, without school and far from society, learning to sew is the only horizon for Sami. From morning until night, jackets, trousers by the thousands. Before a new start.
“My father once said: I don’t want you to have my life, we are going to leave for a free country, or die” Sam is 14 years old. The family resells once again what can be resold and sets out again on the roads, direction Turkey. A network of smugglers promises them to reach France. But for that, the smuggler claims that the family must separate, for security reasons. “My parents accepted, so much did they want to believe it”remembers Sami. The teenager takes the plane holding the hand of this man who reassures him and assures him that in a few days they will be reunited again. He kisses his mother, his sister and his father… without knowing that he would not see him again.
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