He grew up on the edge of a huge beach, whose photos he scrolls through on his smartphone. “Did you see how beautiful it is? » Bilal (all first names have been changed) stops at that of a creek. This is where the boat left Algeria. He’s proud to show off all that sparkling blue he misses, even though he’s grown to love mountains and snow.
At 20 years old, he has been living somewhere in the south of France for almost two years, a place he did not choose but where an association exfiltrated him for his safety, in the summer of 2022. Because he denounced two adults who forced unaccompanied minors from the capital, like himself, to commit thefts under psychotropic drugs, Bilal put himself in danger: the risk of reprisals was too great and the possibility of rebuilding himself by remaining in Paris too thin.
When she meets him, in March 2022, Catherine Delanoë Daoud, called to the rescue by the Hors la rue association which follows the young man, discovers a tall teenager who “alternates phases of excitement with long moments of despondency”. Despite his condition, the lawyer finds him a “great vitality” And ” a lot of humor “. Looking through the pale green file prepared by the association, she is appalled by the long list of attacks he says he suffered from those he initially took for “protectors”. The medical reports and photos taken after one of her numerous attacks upset her. “I said to myself: “This is heavy.” I had never seen so much raw flesh. » What Bilal experienced is serious.
The poor man’s drug
It’s a story that begins in one of the sprawling slums that stretch around Oran, in northwest Algeria. Bilal is the youngest of a family of seven children. The father is a security guard, the mother, a housewife. “It was a hassle,” summarizes Bilal, who delivers a rare testimony on the journeys of unaccompanied minors – Emmanuel Macron mentioned them during his press conference on June 12 and promised “better control” of this question. Few resources, erratic schooling – Bilal did not go to college –, the sadness that sucks in the family after the death of his sister in 2014.
He was not 13 when he started working in his brother-in-law’s butcher’s shop. He learned to gut chickens, make sausages, chop onions and handle spices. That’s the day. At night, he goes out to sea. Bilal talks about sardine fishing like a dream. He loved it. ” It was wonderful, he remembers. And when you eat your sardine, fresh, just out of the sea… It’s magnificent! » He could talk about it for hours, “the big boat and the small boat, the same one I took to leave the country”, light underwater to attract fish, waiting. He describes the gestures carefully. “It was very tiring but I loved it. » Once, the net came up so full that he received the dinar equivalent of 50 euros for the night. It never happened again. In general, he put between 5 and 20 euros in his pocket and a few sardines.
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