(Paris) “Without the fire, no one could survive here”: in a Parisian camp, only the heat of the flames allows migrants to face the night, its freezing temperatures and its penetrating humidity.
It has been several hours, on this night from Thursday to Friday, that the district has been plunged into darkness under negative temperatures. Yet many are still awake in this makeshift camp located under the elevated metro, between La Chapelle and Stalingrad stations in northern Paris.
At three o’clock in the morning, more than a dozen fires are still fanned.
“It’s too cold to sleep… The only thing to do is sit around the fire, talk with friends, wait,” says Reza (he did not give his name), 24, a of the many Afghans in the camp. He sleeps for a few hours during the day, when he manages to find a place in a reception centre.
That evening, some found old cylindrical steel trash cans to light wood fires. Others start homes on the ground, surrounded by simple stones.
Everything is good for keeping the flames going: planks of wood, cardboard, but also plastic, which gives off smoke that catches the nose and stings the eyes.
At a rate of five, ten and up to twenty people around each fire, they are between 150 and 200 to remain standing, among the 400 to 500 people gathered on the camp, dismantled in the early morning for the third time in less than two month.
Because the authorities want at all costs to avoid a fixation point for homeless migrants, when the associations claim for them a center of first reception which would avoid a compulsory passage by the street.
A few meters from the fire, during the night, the power of certain flames still allows you to hold on without shivering. Beyond that, feet and hands freeze quickly. “Without the fire, no one could stand here,” continues Reza. With little cover, he quickly begins to shiver when he moves away from the embers to grab a cup of tea distributed by associations.
Frostbite
Like him, many limit their movements to what is strictly necessary, especially those that would take them away from the fire.
Movements are rare. The same faces are lit by flames at 6:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m., 3:00 a.m. Exhausted, they exchange few words, in a mechanical tone. Even their positions vary little: many remain seated on camping or plastic seats, their hands forward towards the fire.
Among the rare exceptions, this man who takes off his shoes to place his frostbitten feet a few centimeters from the fire. Then who, once the sensitivity has returned to his toes, hastens to put his shoes back on.
Many share a tent with one or two other people, sometimes more.
Slaloming between the groups, looking for a free place near a fire, Riza Shah suddenly stops in front of a tent. ” My house ! he said with a broad smile.
It opens: A man bundled up in a sleeping bag watches Afghan TV on his phone. Next to him are two empty sleeping bags. “When it rains, we get water from the metro,” explains Riza Shah.
A little further on, he lets out a sigh as he observes an extinguished fire in an overturned garbage can. A few minutes later, it disappeared, picked up by another group.
A few meters away, Amanullah Wardak, 38, shows his bed: a large cardboard box, in which he slips to cut himself off from the wind, warming himself somehow in a blanket of less than a meter. .
Seized by a fit of coughing, he takes out of his pocket what was given to him during a raid: a few sachets of doliprane. “The doctor had nothing to do with me,” he says, discouraged.
Despite this destitution, he will end up rushing into his box to get some sleep. Too weak, perhaps, to find a place by the fireside.