“I arrived on March 2, 1999 at Orly. I admit, I didn’t make the trip like everyone else. How to say… They are smugglers who brought me back here, in fact. I was freaked out a lot when I was at the airport”, recalls Alan Geaam. “Between worry… Whether I’m happy, stressed… A lot of emotions, suddenly. At the same time, these are strong emotions, they are both also ‘What will happen behind?‘” The young man arrives in Paris, leaving Lebanon’s civil war behind. He arrives with a dream: to become a cook in France.
The cultural difference immediately struck the Lebanese. “Lebanon is a very small country. I come from a city called Tripoli, there are, I think, 600,000 inhabitants. There are not as many cars, metros, RER. Everything is huge here, it was moving all the time, there is always noise, there are people.”
He starts at the beginning in construction to earn a living. “The worksite allowed me to get out of the street. (…) It was a facelift, in the Choux district, in Créteil. These are buildings of 50 or 40 floors. We climbed on scaffolding, it was clandestine work… Without a helmet, without security, but at least it allowed me to have some money, I slept on the site.” Later, he managed to find a small job as a dishwasher in a restaurant. The machine is launched, and here he is, today a starred chef. “VSvery moment I’ve lived here, I really enjoy it, I want to enjoy it to the fullest, I don’t regret anything. It’s crazy all the same, life, sometimes, it hides extraordinary things from us”, he concludes.