Testimony on forgiveness and peace

The two women open the way to us. This is what I said to myself the first time I saw them together. It was in Lourdes, in January 2024. A beautiful winter sun flooded the room where I recorded their testimony. The moment was solemn, almost intimidating.

“I am Roseline Hamel, the younger sister of Father Jacques Hamel, who died as a martyr of faith in his church, July 26, 2016, after having celebrated the passion of Christ and prayed for peace. “I am Nassera Kermiche, Adel Kermiche’s mother, who participated in the attack during which Father Hamel was murdered. »»

Roseline, a smile and a pale blue look

Solemn and intimidating, because it has been months that we had to write together a story on the meeting and the overwhelming friendship between the two women. Two women that everything, in the eyes of the world, should have separated.

I had known Roseline since January 2018. And it was in Lourdes, already, that we had met for the first time. Roseline had given me that year the Père-Jacques-Hamel Prize, created in memory of her brother, which rewards an article or journalistic production in favor of peace and dialogue. Roseline chaired the jury and the current immediately passed between us.

Not only because Roseline and I have in common the city of Armentières (North), where she has lived for sixty years and where I made all my college and my high school, but because it is Roseline. A pale smile and blue look that has the power to make you better than you are actually. A kiss that slams on both cheeks and the easy tutoring of northern people.

After a conversation with broken sticks during dinner and a short tour by the cave under a freezing spray, our friendship was sealed from the first day. Would she be able to last? I did not know, as Roseline’s health had been damaged by the shock of the attack and the pain of having lost her brother in such excruciating circumstances.

His friendship with Nassera Kermiche

Six years later, when Lourdes became the headquarters of our annual reunion around the Père-Jacques-Hamel price, Roseline did not come alone. This time, she is accompanied by Nassera, who made the trip from Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime).

Over the years and her public testimonies, Roseline had already mentioned her friendship with Nassera Kermiche, the mother of one of the two terrorists who murdered her brother – were then killed, were then killed during the police.

But Nassera, for his part, wanted to keep anonymous to protect his family. If she courageously decided to take the plunge, it is because she in turn wants to testify to her meeting and her friendship with Roseline.

The improbable has changed in evidence

Tell the hell experienced since the attack, her suffering and her fight as a lonely mother confronted with the appalling radicalization of her son whom she had however raised like the rest of the siblings – brilliant siblings where one counts a surgeon, a computer scientist, a teacher …

The same love, the same values ​​of work and sharing, carried by a serene Muslim faith and without ostentation. But none of this protects from the worst. Nassera has only become the mother of a terrorist that the day his son took action in a church.

Before the attack on Father Hamel, she was only the mother of an unstable and manipulable teenager named Adel – which she has never ceased to be. This is why Nassera, the mother of the terrorist, became the friend of Roseline, the sister of the murdered priest. Over time, the improbable has changed in evidence. The unimaginable in vital resources to move forward and write the sequel together.

And then, one beautiful day, Roseline left these words on my messaging: “Nassera is ready. The adventure of our three -voice story then started. Today, more than a year later, the book comes out of the printer. It is called Pain sistersa title suggested by Roseline herself. I put it on the table, in front of them. For the last time, I record our conversation.

Samuel: What do you feel when you saw you both on the cover?

Roseline: This is the culmination of such a long path … A few years ago, we dared the meeting in order to carry our pain together and continue to live. With this book, we now want to share this event with the widest audience. I would like to read him, people understand that the drift of a young person who comes to commit the worst, it does not happen to families affected by unemployment or poverty. Everywhere, in all environments, adolescents are fragile and easy to handle. You have to be vigilant every day and put yourself in the other’s place: how would I react if it happened in my home?

Nassera: In the aftermath of the attack, I was afraid for my family. Fear that we are showing us, that we are put in the newspapers, that we are designated in public vindictive … But over time and all that our meeting with Roseline brought good, I felt the need to deliver what I had on my heart. Show others that I am an ordinary person, within an ordinary family.

A family of Muslims who lived this tragedy from the inside, all the more harshly since our way of living and practicing was doubly questioned: by our son himself and those who manipulated him, but also by those who imagine that we did not do everything to avoid getting there. Now that the book exists, I have the pride of having managed to put all this black on white.

Samuel: You can indeed be proud … It is already not easy for a journalist to go and get his interlocutor even in his most intimate entrenchments, which is more painful. But to accept to indulge as you have done, you need exceptional courage!

Nassera: Of course, this story is very difficult to tell for a mother. But the hardest part is to search his memory. Exhume everything that we have hidden over time to thwart the suffering. Find the dates, remember the circumstances of this or that event, cross -checking memories … I wanted the result to be honest and correspond to reality. My daughter Anissa, who was closest to Adel, helped me a lot in this research.

Roseline: For my part, I was already broken at the perilous exercise of testimony after the publication of my first book, in 2019. But this time, in this common account, we reserved together the terrible orse -ordered or I crossed each of his side, without knowing each other, a few hundred meters from each other. It was a difficult and demanding work, which put us on the path of an even more intense inner peace. Even if nothing ever erases the pain registered since July 26, 2016.

Samuel: insurmountable pain, human sight …

Nassera: Thanks to what we have written, Roseline and I, we can say that there is an afternoon, and that this after can be beautiful … may other people identify with our experience to find the strength to advance against all odds!

Samuel: Nassera, it was you who first sought to meet the nuns present in the church on the day of the attack, but they were not ready. A few months later, it was you, Roseline, who wanted to meet Nassera. How was this necessity imposed on you?

Roseline: At 76, I could have been tempted to let myself die. I no longer saw any meaning in my life. I spent my time – sorry for the expression – to clerk with God, alone. I wanted him. I spoke alone at home. I returned the Bible in all directions and I was going to pray in the church in my neighborhood, in front of a Pietà. And then one day, scrutinizing the face of the speechless virgin in front of her child’s body, I put myself in the place of the mother of the one who killed my brother. If such a thing happened to me, I who am the mother of two boys, what would be my pain? Wouldn’t it be infinitely higher than the pain that I feel today, as hellish as it is? From then on, I no longer wanted to appear on my fate. I had to go to meet this mother in order to deliver her from her guilt.

Nassera: The day you came to ring at my door, I asked you for forgiveness, for Adel and for me. You answered me: I did not come to seek forgiveness, but simply to offer you to wear our pain together. From that moment, you went to life. It did not erase my feeling of guilt. Because when you are a parent, you always wonder what you have not done well so that your child drifts to this point.

Samuel: By listening to you during all these hours that I spent with one, then with the other, I had the feeling that the victims of terrorism and radicalization are not only on one side …

Roseline: It’s quite true! Nassera’s family suffered and continues to suffer because this deadly ideology embraced their youngest child, at the time of his life when he was the most fragile. It is a devious phenomenon and it is often too late when you realize it. Terrorism produces victims on both sides, attackers and attacked. All families toast. That of Nassera as mine. Our meeting allowed me to understand how it could happen to her house, by getting to know all family members. By sharing our personal routes which have so many common points, the joys and the sorrows of everyday life, the birth of grandchildren … This sharing made me understand that the victims of terrorism are not only those that we believe. This is what our book wants to testify!

Nassera: The unknown is scary, especially in such circumstances. But sharing and friendship are always possible if we dare the meeting between people, cultures, religions … Christians or Muslims, I am convinced that we are branches from the same tree. Our roots are the same. We are all human beings and this misfortune touched us, Roseline and I, in the same way. What happened to us should never have happened. By telling our friendship, we hope to bring a little light to the world.