“Maybe he would be a priest today”: the little

“I come to see you because I want to be a priest. » This unusual request, of which we do not know what it represented exactly for him, does not come from a young Catholic from our parishes but from Malik Oussekine, “beaten to death during the demonstration of December 6, 1986”, as a commemorative plaque on the sidewalk reminds us, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Probably forty-eight hours before his death, the 22-year-old student had insisted on meeting a Catholic Church official in the person of Father Bertrand Desjobert, a Jesuit, student chaplain and member of the National Vocations Service. This interview with a priest did indeed take place, as the film by Rachid Bouchareb powerfully evokes, Our Brothers,
devoted to two cases of police violence that took place the same night, one of which had Malik Oussekine as a victim. In theaters from December 7, this work is added to the broadcast, last May, of the mini-series Oussekine, by director Antoine Chevrollier, on the Disney+ platform.

Who was he, this student from the École Supérieure des Professions Immobilières, born in Versailles and broke in full youth? What did he like? What was he interested in? Who was his family? What did he believe in? What did he go through to finally come knocking on the door of a chaplain? And what happened during their interview? Malik’s father, Miloud Oussekine, fought in French troops during World War II, before earning a living as a factory worker and setting up a trucking business. He died on November 22, 1983.

Malik is the last of eight siblings. His brothers and sisters are not Muslims. Neither did he, unlike their parents. Miloud Oussekine drank a small aperitif from time to time. “It was above all our mother who was religious and said her prayers five times a day”recalls a sister of Malik, Sarah, contacted by Christian Family. Apart from basketball and other sports he played, Malik was obviously a huge fan of jazz. The evening of his death, he had gone to a party in a Parisian club in the Latin Quarter where musicians were performing on stage. It was on leaving this concert, on his way back, that his path crossed that of police on motorcycles who, chasing demonstrators, went so far as to kill him, the most unjustly in the world.

Through a few well-crafted scenes, Rachid Bouchareb’s film examines the young man’s spiritual journey. Our Brothers In particular, there is a police inspector reading off the hymn to charity from the First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, taken from the diary found in Malik’s apartment in the 17th arrondissement. “His life has been stopped. We don’t know where he would have gone. Maybe he would be a priest today”says the man who also made the film Native (2006). As for the question of knowing what the young man believed in, Rachid Bouchareb refers to the testimony of the monk who was a priori the last to have spoken face-to-face with Malik.

The desire to consecrate oneself to God

Father Bertrand Desjobert is now deceased. At the time, shortly after the events, he had wanted to meet the family of the deceased then, with their agreement, testify through the press. Twenty-five years later, in 2011, in front of camera and microphone, he recounted once again, and in detail, his interview with Malik, which lasted about an hour. In this document kept in the archives of his order in Paris, the priest declared that the young man was not pursuing a “fad”that this one was “looking for something important for his life”and which he himself had kept from Malik “the wonder of the passage of a shooting star”. He also provided details on what the deceased had entrusted to him that evening: he had met Christian groups the previous summer, in the United States, then in France, in Avon (Seine-et-Marne), and had always felt, deep down, the desire to consecrate himself to God.

“The dominant religion in France is the Catholic religion. So as long as you serve God, you might as well serve Him in the Catholic religion”, was even justified Malik. Words all the more enigmatic as the young man was still in the midst of discovering Christianity. But the most surprising was the air ” press “ of this visitor. Not only had he insisted on meeting the priest as soon as possible, but during the interview there had been this surreal moment when the Jesuit handed him a pocket-sized copy of the Gospel: “That way you can read it wherever you want. – So let’s get started right away! »had replied Malik, complying under the bewildered eyes of Father Desjobert.

“He told us that he felt rushed. It was like he suspected something was going to happen to him.”, confirms Sarah Oussekine. This one describes her brother as a being “very lively intellectually, who questioned himself a lot and was keen to live in tune with his deep values, in search of authenticity and truth” and who wanted “to rise spiritually”. This woman, now in her early sixties, points out that Malik had been hospitalized for a long time as a child, from 3 months to 7 years old, because he suffered from a kidney malformation. “Most of the nurses were nuns. It may have influenced him. » Later, he confided to his sister his desire to become a priest. “This desire would have come to him after seeing the film Assignment. Perhaps because he felt one of the main characters really in tune with himself and in touch with the message of Christ. » Not so long ago, Sarah dreamed of her brother. “I saw Malik again in a dream and I absolutely wanted to give him a gift. I no longer know what I had to offer him, but he explained to me that all material gifts were inaccessible to him. And that the only pleasure within his reach, where he was, was music. » In Heaven, would the angels also play jazz?