By MC Nouvellon
Published on 22 Feb 21 at 7:04
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Audible from the bottom of the towers where the friends met, the sound of broken glass and falling rubble “still hurts your heart”. While the workers operate somewhere between the 10e and the 15e (and last) floor of the city Chicago, in Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), the former inhabitants of these HLMs built in the 1970s, it is difficult to imagine the district without the imposing silhouette of these three buildings.
“It’s my whole life here,” says Amadou. It’s like destroying a part of me. However, by the end of 2021, nothing will remain of the apartments that have seen the thirty-something and a whole generation of Le Havre grow up. Destroyed, the homes of the Vallée-Béreult will be replaced by sports fields.
“We went home without knocking”
It is on the city stadium of the district that the kids of Chicag’, now become parents in their turn, tell their childhood here. That of the afternoons spent playing tourniquet and football at the foot of the towers – “we just had to put down the schoolbags to make the goals” replaces Yero – before the mothers called them from their windows, upstairs, to pass at table.
For them, Chicago was “a family”, a place where “just with the smells, without leaving home, we knew what the neighbors were eating”, and where “we went back to people without knocking”. remembers Messaoud.
Our parents all came from North Africa. They all ended up there together, it was their new family.
Even today, they remember each other’s intercom number. “He is 1004”, “you are 0207” … “We are still called the P9” laugh two former neighbors of level 9.
“Incredible solidarity”
Memories that set a scene different from the more sulphurous image usually attached to Chicago, a nickname taken from the various facts and petty trafficking that are often associated with it. “It was not a lawless area as they say on TV,” says Messaoud. There was a bit of delinquency, like everywhere in France, but it was enough to come to see that it was not that. “
–Arrived in the city in 1999, Carole assures him: “I had heard about Chicago, I had been told not to go there. But when I arrived, I was received like a princess by all the guys in the neighborhood. When I arrived with my groceries and the elevators were broken, the young people would always carry the bags to the top. “
Mother of three children who grew up here, she remembers that “the grown-ups were babysitters for the little ones”, and that there was “great solidarity, it was really incredible. “
“Provisional which lasted almost 50 years”
So when she walks past the buildings on her way to work at the local school – which has gone from four to two classes since the towers were deserted by the families who lived there – “my heart sinks”, she admits.
In front of the openings now without tiles or windows and the walls for some covered cutlery, the former tenants assure him: “At the time, they were palaces.” We had F5s, 100m F6s2 for 600 euros, you realize, remembers Yero. They don’t do that anymore. “
–Of course, the state of the buildings “has deteriorated a lot over the years”, recognizes Messaoud. “It wasn’t really designed to last,” says Amadou. In fact, it is transient which lasted almost 50 years. »Erected in the 1970s to accommodate families of workers, the towers suffered in particular from poor insulation, in addition to the asbestos that was hiding in its walls.
Gradually, the businesses set up at the foot of the towers, such as the bakery where Amadou went to fetch bread on his own “when I was only 3 years old”, have also drawn back the curtain. “But the atmosphere had remained the same”, we are assured.
“I miss the neighborhood”
Decided in 2015 by the lessor Alcéane and the city, the destruction of the city with 432 housing units required the rehousing of 330 families who still lived there. Some tenants have moved a few blocks away, others have moved to new neighborhoods. “They broke the nucleus, summarizes Carole. I live next door, but I miss the neighborhood. ”
For our parents, losing that was a big hit. We feel that it made them get old.
So to revive the atmosphere of the city, Amadou created l’association Cream. Last summer he hosted a barbecue to bring everyone together. “We sold 100 kilos of merguez and 900 sandwiches,” he says. There were even people who no longer lived in Le Havre, and who had not returned for years. “
–Enough to keep the Chicago flame alive a little, which will remain, for him, “the best neighborhood in France; it was killing! ”
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