To My Dear Friend Georges

I was sixteen when I met Georges Dadoun, without imagining that he would become my closest friend, my mentor and a spiritual father. Over forty-two years, he encouraged me to learn, create and believe in my dreams, even the most ambitious ones. He helped me find the courage to pursue my studies, explore photography and cinema, and eventually return to university for a postgraduate degree at thirty-five.

We worked together at the Sorbonne for twenty-four years. Among our most memorable adventures was Carte Blanche, a centre for professional actors. Georges was director of operations and I was his deputy. In just one month, we transformed an empty building into seventeen classrooms and a 250-square-metre dance floor. Film-industry technicians worked around the clock; everything was ready only four hours before opening, when five hundred actors and around one hundred directors and stage directors were due to arrive.

There was a touch of irony in that adventure: Georges entrusted the dance-floor installation to my father, who had once thought me “good for nothing”. Georges, on the contrary, always saw possibilities where others saw limits.

His curiosity was inexhaustible. He read at least one book a day and, at eighty-seven, was still learning piano and studying Japanese. He taught me that learning should never end.

When I became a novelist in 2022 and began writing short stories in 2023, Georges was there to read and encourage my work. Today I have written more than twenty books, and what matters most to me is that he knew the writer I had become.

Georges passed away on 3 July 2024. I still hear his familiar greeting: “Hi, my friend, how is everything going?” I like to imagine that, somewhere above, he is proud of me. He gave me wings. It is up to me to keep flying.