The anguish of Nadia Farès, whose daughter escaped the carnage

It is the nightmare of every parent that has played out thousands of kilometers from France. Nadia Farès lived hours of anguish before being reassured by her daughter’s voice. "My daughter called me: they are safe," the actress confided on her Instagram account, still under the shock of emotion. The drama unfolded by a thread: the young woman and her boyfriend were on Bondi Beach bridge just five minutes before the gunshots erupted, mowing down the crowd that had come to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

While the couple escaped the worst, the violence of this act, described as "terrorist" and "anti-Semitic," has touched them closely. A friend of her daughter’s boyfriend is among the wounded victims of this shooting that left at least 16 dead and 40 injured. "Everyone is in shock," summarizes the actress, testifying to the trauma that strikes the direct witnesses of this scene of war.

Amidst the horror, Nadia Farès has paid tribute to the bravery of Ahmed Al Ahmed, the family man who neutralized one of the shooters. The native of Marrakech has paid a vibrant tribute to the one she describes as an "example that our world desperately needs." "This man, this hero, is Muslim," she insists, emphasizing the symbolic significance of his gesture in the face of an assailant who came to target the Jewish community. For the actress, this intervention proves that "courage and the fight against obscurantism have no religion," but remain above all "a matter of the heart."