Paris (AFP)

"I can not change the past, but with love I can change the future": 47 years after making international media coverage, Kim Phuc Phan Thi, "the little girl in napalm", says in peace, with herself, with the world, despite the suffering that persists.

His secret? A faith pegged to the body, the heart, the soul, she entrusted to AFP, visiting Paris for the publication in French of her book "Sauvée de l'enfer" (Ourania editions), written precisely to tell this spiritual journey that led to serenity.

Hell, it is the one in which dive, on June 8, 1972, a bomb with napalm fell on his village of South-Vietnam. The little Kim, 9, runs on a road, she is caught in the back by the flames, her clothes are reduced to ashes, her neck, her back and her left arm are on fire. A young Associated Press photographer, Nick Ut, captures this terrible moment. The cliché - which earned its author the Pulitzer - shocked the world and became a symbol of the Vietnam War.

Child, then young girl, her suffering is double. That, physical, is immeasurable and does not disappear over the 14 operations and transplants in the years that follow. But she is also deeply psychological. "I felt angry, bitterness, I was hopeless, everything was negative, I thought about dying, I knew I could not live like this forever," says Kim Phuc in her soft voice.

"I had so many questions, so many why, why me, why did this happen, I needed answers."

She does not find them in Caodaism, a syncretistic religion born at the beginning of the century in Cochin China, in which she was raised. "I was devout but at the end of the day, I remained without peace, without love, with an empty heart".

- "A turning point in my life" -

As she recalls her memories, the smile that does not leave her face sometimes tenses with an emotion difficult to control. So she widens it again, raises her hands to her heart, bends slightly and resolutely picks up the thread of her story.

At 19, she went to a library, took out all the religious books and found, among them, the New Testament. "It was a turning point in my life."

It is this turning point that she wished to tell in order to transmit a little "peace and hope": "in my book, I do not speak of religion, but of faith, of my own faith, of the way in which I released my heart. She is followed in this evolution through her tumultuous life from Vietnam to Cuba - where she meets her husband Toan, a North Vietnamese she will convert - before the couple defected to Canada.

Faced with her adventures, her will, her suffering - the last four years she underwent eleven laser treatments - no need to tell her that she is strong. This little piece of elegant woman laughs and retorts: "it is Jesus my strength".

His entourage had warned: Kim Phuc Phan Thi does not wish to speak of war or politics.

She forgave everything. Was reconciled with the picture of "Uncle Ut", as she affectionately calls him, who for a long time reminded him of "his suffering and the loss of his childhood". She "chose to live" and to transmit.

A goodwill ambassador for UNESCO since 1997, Kim runs the Kim International Foundation, a children's charity that supports medical or school projects in partnership with other institutions such as Médecins sans frontières and Save the Children.

© 2019 AFP