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THE HUMBLE HEROES
presents
Ryadh SALLEM,
One "Humble Hero".
What is a « Humble Hero » ?
A person who is not looking for the light, not claiming to be a model.
A person who is determined to give love
And giving love, no matter what, is a truly heroic feat!
There is a “Humble HERO” in each and every one of us
“One needn’t wait to be perfect to start something good!”
Abbot Pierre, founder of the Emmaus movement
I tell myself, there is no such thing as one truth.
There are many truths, and it's magical.
We're so dumb to beat each other up
et de se faire la guerre for ideas. On the contrary,
The world is so beautiful.
We've got something so special in the universe,
something so fragile,
and we're not aware of it.
I think it's too bad we're not managing to raise our spirit
to become aware of this wealth we have,
and of what life is.
When you spend years locked up in a
center or a hospital, months, weeks,
years looking at the ceiling,
when all of a sudden the horizon clears,
you just can't define.
This is the story of a little boy born in Monastir, Tunisia,
in 1977.
He is what was called a “thalidomide” baby.
Thalidomide was a drug prescribed to pregnant women
before it was discovered that it caused birth defects.
This is why this baby was born without hands and without legs.
He landed in Paris when he was two. He had spent almost his entire
childhood in specialized institutions and hospitals
where he underwent many operations.
His name is Ryadh Sallem, and this is the beginning of his story.
He went on to become a “Humble HERO”...
I came across this personality that totally fascinated me,
He spoke to me in a way that was just brilliant.
For me, he is a friend. In fact he's a great friend
What I can say is that this is a guy you can trust.
He knows how to make you
look deep inside yourself and bring out the best in you.
Yes, he gave me much... Helped me to grow...
He's a dreamer whom you want to follow.
He's got this dream but he also achieves things.
it's for real,
hands on as they say.
For me, Ryadh is a hero.
He's my daddy for the heart.
I know lots of friends
who made it thanks to Ryadh.
He's an extraordinary person. That's what you can say about him.
I never worried about what I couldn't do.
I looked at what I COULD do.
I looked for work, like everybody, we'd been trained for going out there,
but out there they weren't ready to welcome us.
So finding a job with my handicap and my looks
wasn't exactly easy.
They told me I'm getting an “Adult Handicapped Benefit”.
I said to myself : “What am I supposed to do with that ?”.
"I didn't go through years of torture to just stay at home."
He was about 18, 20 years old, and had lived
in a closed environment for years and years,
and then suddenly came freedom.
His first objective at the time
was to send medical equipment
like wheelchairs, crutches eyeglasses to African
countries where handicapped people didn't have these things.
We went to this village
where I never imagined I could ever travel to.
One day a warden at the hospital said to the Professor Kabache :
“I'm inviting them to my village !”,
and overnight, there we were in his village. It's really like
magic, a snap of the fingers and here we are in this dream world.
Ryadh, when meeting you for the first time,
one is immediately impressed
by your strong presence,
and most of all your huge smile.
So, Did you always spontaneously go toward others?
I have been like this for a while now.
Ever since I became aware of the fact that other people are part of me.
You live through
other people's eyes. You build yourself
through the judgment of others. If others don't see you, you don't exist.
Probably because he's aware
that life
is very fragile,
something you can lose tomorrow, he just doesn't waste any time.
Ryadh's day ?
Well, he first came by this morning, then he went away again,
he's running.
I discovered sports very early on.
In the center where we lived, sports were a form of physical therapy,
it was an escape from the hospital and the center,
a door to freedom.
It's one of the rare areas where you are allowed to fail.
You fail more often than you win.
That makes you humble in life.
I realized that a lot of people
are afraid of failure. Failure is constructive,
because it prepares a victory. It's important
not to deny that, that pain, failure, all those things
are mechanisms that feed life.
And that is what sports has given me.
When you finally decided to sign up for basketball,
were you aware of the fact that having no hands
could be a hindrance for your wish ?
Like everything else, you have this physical reality
that you can't deny.
But our human strength lies in the fact that we can overcome these things.
There is reason, which is a reality, mathematical, basic,
and then you have passion.
I wanted to play basketball, I was a basketball fan.
This is the sport most widely practiced in the Federation.
The sport that is closest to able-bodied sports.
The basket height is 3,05 meters, same as for non-disabled,
the three-point line distance is the same, over 6 meters,
which proves that they are just as good, maybe better than
able-bodied guys who've got their legs to jump and dunk with.
How do you look back at your long list of achievements ?
Let me just mention some : 15 times swimming champion for France
World record holder for the medley swimming relay, several times
national champion in wheelchair basketball with the Paris Club,
three times European champion,
4 times participant in the Paralympics. Are you
proud of this list of achievements ?
I wouldn't say proud, but it's a beautiful career.
That's right,
he's a dinosaur in wheelchair basketball.
He is fighting a lot
for the handisport,
In schools,
in companies, showing that being disabled
isn't synonymous with abject poverty.
Don't stay victims of the system, just don't be a victim....
What's important is not that you're here,
it's where you'll be tomorrow.
You didn't hesitate to go towards those who are most rejected,
those who live in the shadows,
in other words, prisoners.
How does that work once you're with them behind bars ?
We go inside the jails, we come to see the prisoners,
and we have them play wheelchair basketball.
We try to share about our experience.
I think it's important to try to talk with the prisoners,
because this is the strongest symbol of revolt,
of the shortcomings of society.
They are the embodiment of our failure.
I try to bring my own contribution, to share with them,
with philosophy, with a man's attitude too,
through sports, since that is a universal language.
We don't give up just because we had a problem.
What's the point of living just to be locked up ?
Living is to be free, get moving, creating,
doing things, now that makes sense !
We got letters from former prisoners
who went back to school, who became sports teachers,
or youth workers... During the hours we spend with them, they are able to
escape, They are no longer in jail. They are with us.
He is genuinely creative, he always
has these extraordinary ideas that we would never have thought of,
or we would have thought they are impossible,
and he manages to bring people on board with his ideas.
And so I'm doing the Defistival.
He started by launching his operation
on the Champ de Mars. There wasn't much going on there.
And now we have this Defistival.
The idea was to mix people, all sorts of different people,
just people meeting.
The leitmotiv is disability, because it can happen to everybody.
That is the foundation of this celebration.
The idea is to show what the associations have been doing
all year-round, the results of everything our doctors
and institutions are doing. These results are never shown.
It's a challenge to organize a celebration with issues like these.
Taking an issue as powerful as disability, not asking for any funding for research,
for science, not asking for help, but just to say
“We're going to have a celebration”
This is not what we are taught.
We are taught to keep a distance
from the disabled person. Which I find completely wrong for today.
I have known him now for five years,
and really he has helped me to grow,
I see disability in a different light now.
Everybody can vibrate with Ryadh,
probably because he has that inner strength,
that love of life, that “joie de vivre”
that is contagious,
that spreads, that makes people want to be on board.
When somebody passes an exam,
you celebrate.
But when you acquire a capability, a degree of autonomy, of happiness,
when does anybody celebrate that?
For all those people who've gone through a grind?
For all the issues relating to disability,
you created a very special symposium
called “Civilizational Challenges”
have set up a celebration,
organized a big festival and so forth,
you get a label for doing things
that aren't taken really seriously.
And so I wanted to use the codes from the world of “serious things”,
like science and such, to show that
what we are doing is actually very serious. The “Civilizational
Challenges” symposium is based on the same mindset as the “Defistival”,
the idea is to mix people and genres
who would tend to never come together
like a movie-maker,
or a philosopher, or a politician,
on a subject they aren't usually invited
to talk about at the same time.
What does it feel like to have your name on the cover of a scientific book
which is a collection of the work of about 30 renowned researchers ?
It feels like this is possible !
Obviously, it makes me happy,
and I also think that the idea is
to bring that extra bit of soul to research,
to understand what happened in the past
so as to explain what is happening today.
Neanderthals
were human beings because they buried their dead,
this we more or less already know,
but they took care of their disabled people. So this has become
a new reference to explain that our humanity
is based on our capacity to take care of our weakest ones.
It's true that building something is exhausting,
but this is a very enriching path.
And then you have D-day,
that's when you have all the smiles, all the energy,
all those people who are just happy to be there,
this is pure magic.
Then you have what comes afterwards,
the feedback from people
and how this has impacted them,
the second wave,
how this enriched them, how this very took root inside them, simple premise
of “come with your differences, leave with your likenesses”,
it's a very poetic phrase but for me it goes much deeper.
We have a disease in our society society which is that we are afraid
of others, we are prejudiced,
even for ourselves, we lack confidence
in many situations,
so that we tend to reject people people and tend to have behaviors
that aren't simple, aren't cool...
Tout le monde !
Tous avec moi, devant avec moi Tout le monde qui fait "ouais"
Le Défistival, tout le monde avec moi Tout le monde qui fait "ouais"
All I can say is that if this eigth edition is a success
it is thanks to you who are in front
of us, but also thanks to those next to me and behind me...
The whole team of volunteers,
the technicians...
Thanks to all of you,
see you next year, have a great
evening, and don't forget to be HAPPY
OK ! Et 1, 2, 3 !
Thank you
I'll be right there
Get...
Get the beer ready.
It's great to give life through children,
through what you do, through knowledge,
through risks that you have taken.
If you've contributed to making more people happy
because you have taken a risk, well, there you are...
“Life is good” as we say
Ryadh Sallem, you are a HUMBLE HERO !
It's an honor to know you. Thank you.
Well, and I thank you...
THE HUMBLE HEROES
Sous-titrage : Eclair Group
That sure gives you a boost!
Now that's a real pain.
- You ok, Ryadh ? - Look at him, filming everything.
Oh yeah, I'm going to sleep like a log.