Parisian striker Nadia Nadim intends to help her club win the first French championship title in its history in women's D1, Sunday (9 p.m.), in the event of a draw or victory at Parc OL.
She will then publish on June 2 her autobiography (in French),
My Story
, in which she reviews the assassination of her father, general of the Afghan army, when she was 12 years old.
Nadia Nadim then had to flee Taliban power to find herself, with her mother and her four sisters, in a refugee camp in Denmark, where she built her life partly around football.
At 33, PSG striker Nadia Nadim has had a lot of lives.
Born in Herat, Afghanistan, she was only 12 when she had to flee her country after the death of her father, an army general, shot dead by the Taliban.
The start of a "very difficult journey" to a refugee camp in Denmark, alongside her mother and four sisters.
Nadia Nadim, who now leads a double life as a professional footballer and a surgical intern, publishes her autobiography,
My Story
(Marabout editions)
on June 2
.
Before a real women's D1 final on Sunday (9 p.m.) between OL and PSG, Nadia Nadim spoke at length to
20 Minutes
.
Why did you insist on publishing your autobiography, first in Danish, then now in French?
I think my story can be inspiring, in the sense that we all have difficult things to deal with in life.
I want to show that you should never lose hope, even at such times.
It's also a message to people who don't believe in a second chance.
If you give someone a second chance, something amazing can happen that has happened to me.
PSG wanted the book to come out in French because it considers me a symbol.
The sun is back ☀️
We have fun, we relax and we taste this goal of @nadia_nadim 👀 # MHSCPSG pic.twitter.com/oSu5v1zk1a
- PSG Women (@PSG_Feminines) March 29, 2021
The symbol that we can go from discovering football, at age 7, with his father in his garden in Afghanistan, to two of the biggest clubs in the world (Manchester City and PSG)?
Yes, with my sisters, we have always had a special mentality.
My father absolutely wanted to have a boy, but he had five daughters.
He raised us like boys, to be endless winners and competitors, in absolutely all areas.
This mentality is deeply rooted in me.
It got us to fight sometimes for games without the slightest importance.
This habit of surpassing myself all the time has helped me a lot in my football career, and more generally in my life.
How did you learn of the assassination of your father, general of the Afghan army, by the Taliban in 2000?
We guessed that he had been killed, but in fact, our mother never started a discussion with us to clearly announce her death.
There was then no question of methods to avoid trauma to children.
We were in a war zone, and all that mattered was surviving until the next day.
I just remember seeing my mom burst into tears one day.
A relative of the family was there in the desert when someone shot my father.
So he told my family that my mother should stop looking for her husband.
How were you able to move forward, from the height of your 12 years?
It's very simple, I wanted to stay alive, and for that, you have to move on.
It took me a long time to come to terms with his death.
I thought he would reappear one day because I always saw my father as a superhero.
But he never came back and at one point I realized that this was life too, I couldn't control everything that was going to happen to me.
I could just hold on to the hope that better days were ahead of me.
Was exile the only option for your family then?
Yes, clearly, it was impossible for us as women to have a future with the Taliban in power in Afghanistan.
Imagine how hard it was, as women, to know that there was absolutely nothing you could do: you couldn't work, go to school, or even go out, it was horrible.
If we had stayed there, we probably wouldn't be alive today.
So we went to Pakistan, then to Italy, with false passports, and finally we were transported in the back of a truck to Denmark, while we were targeting England.
Do you still often think back to this period of permanent danger and the assassination of your father?
No, I try not to think about it too much.
I'm just thankful that I got a second chance at life.
When you experience such a situation, how will you react?
Either you choose to be upset, give up, and ruin the rest of your life, or you accept what happened to you and move on.
I chose this solution, just like my family.
In a sense, did you choose football when you arrived in Denmark in order to keep the memory of those first passes exchanged with your father?
Honestly, it was more football that chose me.
It was my destiny.
Arriving in Denmark, we found ourselves in a refugee camp in Aalborg.
Right next to the camp, I immediately spotted the football fields.
Football is the most accessible sport.
You don't need much, just your feet, and something round that can act as a ball.
When you're a kid and have nothing, that's fine for you.
How was your integration through football in Denmark, where in 2009 you became the first athlete of foreign origin to become international, all sports combined?
Starting a new life in a country where you are nobody, where you have nothing, where you don't know the language and where you have to build everything, it's extremely hard.
But again, we didn't really have a choice.
This life in Denmark was our only option.
I worked so hard that I couldn't not be selected.
What was difficult was being in an environment where everyone behaved a certain way except me.
I felt different, often even as a stranger to the selection, and that can still be the case.
In your book, we understand that the football field was the only place where you felt free, far from all your worries?
Yes, this is the incredible effect that sport could have had on me.
As soon as I found myself with the ball, everything else was gone, I was just happy.
I wish everyone who goes through hardships in life to have a passion to hold on to.
As a teenager, did you dream of becoming a footballer or a surgeon?
I think I dreamed of both and didn't want to choose (
smile
). When I became a professional player in Denmark, I would go to the hospital in the morning and train in the afternoon. There were many nights during which I hardly had any sleep to be able to continue my two passions. I remember an Algarve Cup with the national team, just before my medical exams. All the girls got up at 9 o'clock, but I was up at 4 o'clock to study before breakfast. Leading these two lives simultaneously requires dedication and resilience. I still have a semester to finish and I cannot do it in France as I am 100% professional.
You are coming to the end of your contract at PSG this summer and there have been recent rumors that you want to quit professional football.
At 33, has the time come for you to switch to medicine for good?
No, I still feel in good shape and I have a huge impact on the team every time I play.
So I want to continue professional football for two or three more seasons.
I don't know if I will be in Paris again at the start of the next school year, I take things as they come.
I am totally focused on this title of champions of France to go for.
We worked hard to be leaders (one point ahead) before this match, and for 90 minutes, it will be war on the pitch!
Your European qualification, as surprising as it deserved, last month at Parc OL (1-2), did it change a lot of things in people's minds?
We have a great team and our only barrier was mental compared to Lyon.
Beating OL in an important meeting allowed us to overcome this barrier.
It will help us for this big league game.
Does your life course have an impact on the player that you are?
That's a good question (
smile
).
Everything that happens in life builds your character, including on the pitch.
I am clearly a warrior, a player who will never give up.
For many Lyon supporters, you are even sometimes too warlike against OL, in view of certain faults on Wendie Renard or Sakina Karchaoui during previous clashes ...
The only time I could have taken a red card was for my tackle on Wendie Renard (during the Champions Trophy in September 2019).
The ball was really equidistant between the two of us.
Football is passion.
On this action, I wanted to show that I was not afraid of anyone.
But I never wanted to hurt a player.
For two years, you have also been a Unesco Ambassador.
How do you see this role?
I have a very important message to get across so that children around the world have access to school.
Even though it has been almost impossible to travel for over a year, I have been to refugee camps in Jordan and Kenya to talk to the children and play soccer with them.
I wanted to try to put football in their life.
More than anything, I go there to give these children hope.
I share my experience with them and encourage them not to give up.
My career can be a strong example in their eyes.
Do you think that your autobiography can also be a valuable message to your teammates?
When they complain that they can't eat what they want as professional athletes, I remind them that they might not have access to food at all.
When you haven't experienced the pains that have been mine, it's all hard to believe.
I hope that some of them will read my book and thus understand better how the world can work.
Perhaps they too will one day become sources of inspiration and seek to visit refugee camps.
More than 20 years since you left Afghanistan, what place does your country of birth occupy in your life?
I haven't been able to go back yet because the situation was not secure enough.
But I have the ambition to one day see what the country has become, to meet young Afghans, and to see how my childhood memories come to the surface once there.
“My Story”, published by Marabout, available here from June 2 (18.90 euros).
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