« He had crossed the Mediterranean, passed through Italy, reached Marseille. To see his son. »
☽ Algeria · Marseille · The crossing — Aïssa Boumaza
The absent one
Seventeen years without him
There are questions we carry before we even know we're asking them. For Samir, that question was: who is my father?
He must have been seven or eight. At the post office on boulevard Gambetta, he placed his fingers on a Minitel and typed: Boumaza. His own name. The only link connecting him to this man he hadn't seen since he was two.
The green screen showed something. A name. An address. A phone number. In Marseille.
« He had found his father on a Minitel at the post office on boulevard Gambetta. Between two people waiting their turn at the counter. »
He waited ten years. Jacqueline had said: when you're eighteen, you can do as you please. He waited.
Algeria · Les Baumettes · Exile
A man between two shores
That evening, at Magid's, a phone dialled towards Algeria. A receiver passed to Samir. And then the voice. His father's voice. For the first time since he was two.
Aïssa Boumaza. Repeat offender. Seventeen years at Les Baumettes prison in Marseille. Expelled from France. Returned to Algeria. Banned from French territory.
A week later, his father was there. Aïssa had crossed the Mediterranean, passed through Italy, reached Marseille. Expelled, banned, he had come back anyway.
« You can say many things about this man. You can judge his life, his choices. But that gesture — crossing Europe clandestinely to see his eighteen-year-old son — says something no judgement can erase. »
The encounter
The restaurant in Marseille
He had a scar. A long scar running across almost his entire cheek, deep, old. He had a charisma that needed no justification.
Samir walked beside him through the streets of central Marseille. And he thought of Scarface. Of those characters who occupy space differently from others.
This was his father.
Milestones
Aïssa's story
1978Samir is born in Gap. Aïssa is gone. Jacqueline raises her son alone.
1980Samir is two. He pulls the jeans. The violence. Then silence, years of silence.
1985Les Baumettes. Seventeen years. Marseille. Expelled to Algeria. Banned from French territory.
1987A Minitel. Boulevard Gambetta. Samir searches for Boumaza. The green screen lights up.
1996Eighteen years old. Marseille. The voice on the phone. Then the crossing. The scar. The restaurant.
2007Jacqueline learns of his death. She weeps. Real tears. She says: if it weren't for the alcohol, I would still be with him.
The train home
Marseille — Nîmes
On the train back, the sun setting over the garrigue. Samir looked out of the window.
He looked like him. He could see it now — the natural charisma, that way of occupying space. Something in the gaze.
He now knew where he came from.
« Not where his values came from — that was Jacqueline. Entirely Jacqueline. But where what he was in his body, in his presence, came from. He was eighteen. And for the first time, he was whole. »