ChronicFor this series, journalist and director Stefania Rousselle sets off on the roads of France, with a simple question: “How are you? This week, Johanna Fezzani, 30, prison guard in Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine.
“At school, I was a real bitch. I was on the stalker side. I was mean. The real plague! I never did my homework. I arrived super early, and I copied all those at the head of the class. If she dared to rebel – like: “You’re annoying” –, I fired her from the group. At recess, it was direct: “Why are you following us?” And she was going to cry. Yeah, and besides, I was popular. With my sisters, we were known to be very beautiful. Without blowing it, huh. Sometimes we wonder what we would have become if we had been ugly.
We were six girls and two boys. I am number six. So there were a lot of us in the apartment and we couldn’t let it go. First come, first served. We lived in an HLM in Nantes. Three per room. It was super quiet. The big ones in the neighborhood, they were hot, but that’s because they stayed up late at night talking on the football benches. And just for that, they felt more pissed.
I could have continued to be a bitch, but I don’t know, I turned out well. I must have been 16, it was roll call day in high school. I put myself in the front row – I dreamed of being a vigilante. The soldiers were there. They explained to us our duties as citizens, they introduced us to the different armies. In the classroom, everyone was asleep; but me, I was thoroughly. I registered directly for their open house. My sisters, they didn’t understand. “You’re too crazy as a girl!”
A “mouth note”
I went alone, to the military base – like a grown-up. I ate there. I did abseiling. From the zip line. And they told me about the gendarmerie reserve. “Oh yeah ? Cannon!” I went to training. At 5 a.m., you were up. You were singing military songs while marching in time. Very Breton songs and more! I loved The White Stoat : “Where are you going comrades, with your loaded guns? We will lay ambushes. Come join our army!” I was singing loudly. I was proud. It was intense. You were learning the laws, self-defense, the use of force. You were learning to shoot. And I was strong. Writing: it was good; sport: it was good; shooting: it was good. The thing that didn’t work was my attitude. When someone asked me something: “Why ?” “And why this?” “Why this ?” And them : “But shut up!” “And why ?” Ha ha ha! I had – what they call in the jargon – a “mouth note”, but then, shit! But one of my bosses saved me – and I became a reservist. My mother, she hung the picture of my graduation at home. I am with my kepi, my rifle and my medal. At home, we weren’t nationalists at all. I don’t even know if my mother, she knows her The Marseillaise. When there was the attacks on the twin towers, she said : “They cut me off my program with their shit thing, there, in America!”
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