Nouari, a young migrant saves a woman from drowning in the Villette basin

That day, two fifty-somethings, Nathalie, a Pilates teacher, and her friend Michèle were walking Mustang, Michèle’s dog, along the edge of the Villette basin. It’s 3 p.m. and the two friends are sitting on the terrace of a café when Mustang, frightened by the barking of another dog, jumps back and falls into the water. The dog swims very well, but at this point in the pool a pumping system is installed which literally swallows Mustang in less than a minute. Michèle, swimming champion in her youth, jumps into the water but also finds herself caught by the pumping system, “sucked to the bottom like a giant vacuum cleaner”.

Nouari, after hearing Michèle’s cries of distress screaming “Help”, and those of Nathalie seeing her friend die before her eyes, approaches the pool, and dives without thinking to save this woman he does not know. The very powerful current carries him too, but the waiter of a café, Kamel, throws a buoy which Nouari manages to bring closer to Michèle before bringing her back to the edge of the pool.

A “champion”the firefighters will tell him, the only state representatives to have congratulated Nouari more than a week after the tragedy during which Mustang lost her life, while the hero for a day is still jobless and homeless. There is also little chance that Nouari will be, like some before him, naturalized on merit. His story has in fact been largely eclipsed by the news of the weekend, the Roland Garros final and especially the results of the Europeans, which Nouari claims to have watched closely but on which, being too modest, he prefers not to make any comments. . Even if the young hero admits to secretly dreaming that a stranger will also jump into the water for him.