2024-02-25 08:16:00
In August 2015, Mohamed Arir, 68, gave his passport and the keys to his small apartment to his grocer neighbor, telling him that he was going to Marseille. Since then, no one has ever seen this retiree who was already suffering from memory problems at the time.
“At the beginning, I still had hope. Today, we just want to know, because it’s heavy to bear.” In Montpellier, Sarah and Samia Arir, two sisters in their thirties, do not hide their distress, nine years following the sudden disappearance of their father, Mohamed Arir, 68, who no longer gave the slightest sign of life since August 2015. “We made a lot of films, and it’s very painful.”
Memory loss
Arriving from Algeria in France in 1969, Mohamed Arir always worked as a mason, either with bosses or as a craftsman, before retiring. He lived in the Plan Cabanes district of Montpellier, and began to have health problems in his sixties. “He had a mini stroke and he had treatment, and he started to lose his memory” says Samia, “He didn’t remember in the evening what he had eaten that morning. But he was a man who had been independent all his life, and who had difficulty accepting dependence.”
Like many seniors suffering from degenerative brain diseases, Mohamed retained very precise old memories, and continued his life following his habits. “He lived on rue de Metz, near the Plan Cabanes mosque, and went there every day to help and see his friends. He always had his bag with his phone and his identity card with him. He came almost every day at my place in Prés d’Arène, it was the only address he managed to remember.”
He leaves his keys and his passport
Until August 2015, when it seemed to disappear. “He didn’t come to see me for two days, it was weird. On the third day, I went to his house” continues Samia. “There was no one there. Near his house, there was a small grocery store, and the gentleman told us that he had left him the keys to his apartment and his passport, telling him that he was going to Marseille . He was the last person who would have seen him.”
Marseille ? “He had his mother and his sister there, it was a place that he did not forget and where he often went, he took the train, and the route, he knows it. We went there, to to watch.” But no trace of Mohamed Arir in Marseille, and no clue to understand what might have happened to him in his apartment.
Dead and buried under X?
“After three days we made a statement to the police, they told us to renew it every six months. We kept his apartment for a year and a half, hoping that he would come back one day. We went see the Marseille police station, where no one reported it.”
Nine years following his disappearance, Sarah and Samia admit to being resigned. “At first we put up posters, we went to Algeria where he has a brother who looks just like him.” No result. “We no longer have much hope that he is alive, it is not following nine years that we will find him on the street. But we need to know if he was found somewhere and buried under X.”
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