Rika Zaraï died on December 23, 2020 at the age of 82. This Thursday, December 23 is the anniversary of his death. In the pages of Paris Match on June 17, 2008, the Franco-Israeli singer told how her “rage for life” avoided this gesture that could have killed her more than fifty years ago.
The 1970s star has joined the stars. December 23, 2020, Rika Zaraï passed away, as the Israeli Embassy revealed on Twitter. She was 82 years old. This Thursday, December 23 marks the first anniversary of his death. During her life, the Franco-Israeli singer will have gone through heavy hardships. Long before her stroke which affected her on June 3, 2008 and left her after-effects for years, the interpreter ofSo i sing had been victim of a terrible accident, which almost cost him his life. It was in November 1969. While returning from one of her concerts in eastern France with her future husband Jean-Pierre Magnier and her friend Jocelyne, the car had been thrown “on the roof of a house below”, told the artist in the columns of Paris Match June 17, 2008. An event that had plunged her into a coma for six days, and had aroused in her dark thoughts.
Through his poignant and sincere text, Rika Zaraï revealed to have lost the will to live, due to a worrying diagnosis, to the point of wanting to commit suicide. “The doctors say that I will never walk again. (…) First in the form of rapid lightning, the prospect of death turns into a fixed idea after three weeks. Like Hamlet, committing suicide to sleep, ending a tide of pain. Die, the end of torments. The nurses give me pills every day, which I do not swallow and which I store in a handkerchief under my mattress. I amassed fourteen. Enough to go tonight, through the longest, hardest night, but the most constructive of my life. (…) It’s decided: I’m going to bow out “, she related, with an open heart. She had then “wished good night to [s]we are married “, convinced that she would never see him again.
“My anger turns into a rage to live”
Fortunately, the taste for life had finally gained the upper hand. Like a click. “1 am. A crazy ball of ideas is dancing in my head. I imagine all the songs and things I could have done in my life, travel and have more fun. I have been too wise, too kind. I settle my accounts with myself. 2 hours. I hold my cocktail of pills in my hand, the glass is filled with water. Then something switches: the more I blame myself, the more I realize that I haven’t lived enough. 4 a.m., anger gives me energy. In the midst of the din in my head, I hear a voice. It envelops me, vibrates with hope. She tells me that I haven’t tried everything, thatsomewhere there is a way to overcome this fate“, confided Yaël’s mother before continuing, without taboos : “My anger turns into a rage for life. At dawn, I promise myself that I will never accept this condemnation. I pour my pills and the tissue into the glass. ” A rage to win that gave him fifty beautiful years more, before taking his last breath.
From song to naturopathy
This convalescence gave birth to a new passion in Rika Zaraï who, after being cured by plants, turned to natural medicine. An alternative to drug treatments which, she was convinced, also saved her from her nervous breakdown at the end of 1976. As early as 1983, the contested naturopath had embarked on the writing of his work entitled My natural medicine, edited by Carrère / Michel Lafon.
Article written with the collaboration of 6Medias.
Photo credits: DOMINIQUE JACOVIDES / BESTIMAGE