Ado d’ailleurs

Yassin is Afghan. He is seventeen, maybe eighteen years old and arrived by himself in France, illegally. “It’s hard to tell my story: if I talk, the trees are uprooted; if I write, the pens break”. Yassin is waiting for the official papers that will regularise his status as a refugee. Each morning, like Octavio, Rachid and Clemenza, who have also fled war and other crises, he attends his French lessons, at school. When they all are asked to pronounce a word beginning with “P”, the same example jumps to their lips: “Police!”. After class, Yassin dreams and seeks time on his own, before finding a friend to share his walks around the strange new city. Time is again suspended when he has to appeal against the refusal of his application. And then he falls in love. “My dreams never lie.”