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« We knew Kaylia was one of us, but we didn’t know she could do gymnastics. When she won a medal, we realized her cousin was a great champion. “. Hayat, who is in his 50s and wears a light-colored scarf on his head, speaks with undisguised joy about the brilliant achievements of young people at the Paris Olympic Games (OG) on August 4. Kylia Nemours.
At the doorstep of the modest one-story house owned by Djamel Nemour’s uncle, surrounded by olive trees and a vegetable garden and adjacent to a small farm, on the edge of a road that passes through the tiny village of Beni Meslem, about 40 kilometers east of Jijel, Hayat almost apologizes for not being able to talk about the family in detail.
She was not from the village, having lived for a time in Algiers before returning here, where she looked after the household and her offspring, four children, including a teenager with bright green eyes who had given up school and whose face and complexion borrowed a lot from people in Caillia, who had never met her.
Like many remote towns in the country, far from the big cities, Beni Meslem is no exception, where the lifestyle of its inhabitants combines pastoralism with other activities. Located on the side of the Oued El Kebir valley, on the edge of a wooded forest, not far from the commune of Khiri Oued Adjoul, on which its territory depends, Beni Meslem looks like a village where time has stopped at this Tuesday, August 6.
« We are certainly proud »
There is an Olympian calm, disturbed only by the sound of cicadas or sometimes the singing of cocks. Only a few people, especially the oldest, dare to set foot outdoors, as the youngest prefer to play trumpets on the magnificent beach of Beni Belaid, three kilometers away as the crow flies.
Under the shade of the olive and fruit trees or on the terraces of the two or three cafés in the village, the few people present seemed to while away the time as best they could, talking about everything, while a few others were tending cattle in the neighboring fields.
Kylia Nemours? If most people don’t know this talented gymnast or her father, Jamel, who was also born in France, we can’t hide the pride that the village has in this family.
« We are of course proud, but we don’t know this little girl, nor her father, who has never been here. I only know his brother, Noureddin, who comes from time to time. For a while, he wanted to show his business in Algeria, but he gave up and returned to France. We only heard about it through social networks. », says quickly the thirty-something Fares, a cousin of Kaylia Nemour’s father, before boarding a minibus and heading to the beach.
« We didn’t follow the game on TV, but later we saw it on social networks and on my youngest son’s phone. We were of course very happy. Even president Talking about her “Hayet is delighted and assures us that The Nemours family only gathers during holidays ». « Maybe today’s mentality is different ”, she speculated.
From Anonymity to Light
If we do not speak highly enough of the feat of the young gymnast, it is mainly because, with the exception of a few descendants of Uncle Jamal Nemours, the family had long since severed ties with the village.
Born in Ouled Yacoub, a small village overlooking Beni Meslem that was long abandoned by its inhabitants, especially during the Dark Decade, Kaylia Nemour’s grandfather Salah immigrated to France in the 1950s and set up a business in Noisy-Le-Grand, near Paris. He was a maintenance worker in the metro. After independence, he returned to the country to marry a woman from Imaizen, who gave him four girls and four boys, all born in France, including Kaylia’s father, Jamel.
« He bought property in Constantine ” Hacen Tamine, a retiree who settled in Algiers, said of his great uncle. Died a few years ago The sports enthusiast and consummate bilingual also made no secret of his pride at seeing the teenager beat the American and Chinese girls.
« How proud it is to see our flag raised between the American and Chinese flags », he enjoyed it. He claimed that he witnessed the rise of the talented gymnast at the African Championships in South Africa in May 2023, when Kylia won the gold medal for Algeria, just a few months after she changed her sports nationality due to a dispute with the national team. French Gymnastics Federation.
« She even invented an element that now bears her name. », he stressed, as if to ensure that he had been following the native of Saint-Benoît-la-Forêt (Indre-et-Loire) for some time.
His wish? That Kaylia’s father, Jamel, would come one day.” Visit the ruins of the house at Ouled Yacoub ”. It is a way of inviting him to follow in his father’s footsteps, to smell the land that wrote the destiny of his father and his champion.
Kaylia Nemour’s feat, between a family who only knew her grandfather, who had long left her birthplace and emigrated to France, and young people who increasingly know through social networks, has this merit: to make a small, simple village proud and bring anonymity. “ We young people have been interested since his father spoke, but the elderly are unaware, like this old woman sitting under an olive tree Jena, a young girl from Nemours’ neighborhood, explained, pointing to an old woman sitting under a nearby olive tree, her wrinkles telling no doubt about the trials of life she had to endure.
« We are glad that Kaylia has her grandparents here. Personally, I don’t remember ever hearing about them ever being here. “, she said. She summarized the scope of Kylia’s attack before walking cautiously to the iron gate of the house next to Nemours’s house and disappearing behind it: Our village has emerged from obscurity ».
Nothing could have inspired this pride more than the eagerness of two young men, cactus vendors on the roadside leading to El Milia, who did not hesitate to accompany day-tourists to Benimeslem and drive them to the Nemours house.
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