Dressed in black clothes that camouflage his scarred body, and equipped with a futuristic prosthesis in his right hand, the 25-year-old drinks a Perrier record in a guinguette in Lyon after a demonstration organized for the day of the interprofessional strike on 18 October.
“It’s important to me, I go to these kinds of events all the time,” he told AFP, lifting his round glasses which keep sliding down his burnt nose.
A symbol of student unease
Very active since his 15 years in the socialist movement, Anas remains, for some, a symbol of the discomfort that young students sometimes face. On November 8, 2019 at 2.50 pm he decided to kill himself in a spectacular gesture.
“I went to get a can from the station next door, poured five liters of petrol into it, threw it over my head and lit the fire with some sort of lighter,” he lets himself go in a neutral tone to defuse his acting which left him with third-degree burns, at over 75%.
“I was exhausted”
How come ? “Because nothing was right”: burnout due to the intense trade union activity parallel to his studies, economic difficulties linked to the loss of the scholarship for having rejected the second year of his driving license three times, “very” depressive behavior aggravated according to him by hypothyroidism …
“I was exhausted,” says the French-Moroccan born in Saint-Étienne. He was looking for a “shocking way to prove it” and “when you’re all alone, you have two options: murder or public suicide attempts.”
He then wrote a “political testament” to highlight “the problems facing students” and tell “people to keep fighting,” even if they “decided
“His gesture brought the issue of student precariousness into the public debate”, estimates Magalie, 22, her friend since 2018, insisting on the “psychological discomfort linked to (their) living conditions”.
“Studying means survival for some students and Anas has paid the price. This precariousness will have marked her in her flesh throughout her life and luckily he is still there to talk about it », adds the sociology student at Lyon 2.
“Live My Life”
After being “rescued” by Kevin, “a guy from the next building site” who took a fire extinguisher to put out the flames, the pain of burns ensues, five months of artificial coma, three months of continuous treatment, all punctuated by – between 30 and 45 according to him, “perhaps even more”, Anas hesitates.
He leaves the rehabilitation center on April 30, 2021, to be able to demonstrate on May 1. “It had to be, it was too symbolic. I did the demonstration, my feet hurt because I had one toe completely amputated and three others partially amputated, but there was no problem,” she says.
Now a L3 student in political science at Lyon 2, her convictions have not changed, “except on disability”, the nuances of the one who returned to scholarship and now receives the allowance for disabled adults (AAH).
A “normal” student life.
“When we learned that he would return, we quickly organized ourselves to help him find a student life in the best possible way and give him the best possible chance of succeeding in his educational project”, testifies Nathalie Dompnier, president of the Lumières. University, referring to an adjustment of the end-of-year exams, courses adapted to his medical visits and support for the mission of disability.
“As a student I live a normal life”, confirms Anas, despite the hangover. “People’s gaze can be a little difficult. On the subway, they tend not to sit next to me,” she says.
But “I didn’t let this thing get me down and if I got out it was to do something and live my life”, insists the one who is heading to the customs inspector competition after a master’s degree and who would like to create his own union and party politic.
