Life and death of Yasser Abdallah, 20, broke in Calais on the road to exile – Liberation
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The young Eritrean dreamed of going back to school and being a driver in the United Kingdom. He had been in Calais for a week, after a year of wandering in Europe, when he was crushed by the truck he was trying to get on clandestinely.
His name was Yasser – the “easy going” in Arabic. Yasser Abdallah, a 20-year-old Eritrean, died on the night of Tuesday, September 28, between 4 and 5 a.m. According to the story of his relatives and associations presented on the spot shortly after the tragedy, the young exile was struck when getting into a truck heading for England on a road to Calais. On the evening of his death, he took the turn of another who had failed to leave his sleep. He was running as fast as possible when “his” truck pulled up close to him. His friend Nour did not see his round face, with a childish and angelic aspect, crash to the ground. It was the security of the parking lot that spotted his inert body on the videos of his surveillance cameras.
Nour leaned over his unconscious friend to make him profess his Muslim faith one last time, but Yasser’s index finger dropped. Nour tore his clothes with a knife to listen to his already silent heart. “In the afternoon, he told us: ‘Tomorrow I will be in England. I dreamed that I was dressed in white in a place where everything is white… ””
“The exiles who witnessed told us that this happened all the time. They try to board a truck and the driver zigzags or brakes to prevent getting on. From there they fall. Their first reactions were: “What will happen to the driver? “ remembers Marguerite Combes, delegate of the Utopia 56 association in Calais, one of the first …