Friday, October 13, 2023, around 11 a.m., Mohammed Mogouchkov, a 20 years old young man originally from Ingushetia, a Russian Caucasian Republic neighboring Chechnya, with two knives in his hands, burst into his former high school, the Gambetta High School of Arras in France. Several altercations ensue on his way, with two teachers and two technical agents. The blows to one of the teachers, Dominique Bernard, 57, a literature teacher, were fatal. He attacked the teacher with knives while he was at the time in front of the school. A second teacher came to help his colleague; he was attacked in turn. Mohammed Mogouchkov then entered the high school grounds where he attacked a technical agent and a maintenance agent. Turning back, he found himself face to face with police officers who neutralized him with a taser and arrested him.
Almost three years to the day after the assassination of another professor on October 16, 2020, Dominique Bernard, man of letters, was in turn a victim of terror.
Who can blame a good, kind, smiling and open-minded man? Member of a singular corporation that of the teachers, who defend only one interest, that of the younger generations, in their right to shine with their own light. What was he accused of? What stubborn grudge fueled this desire for revenge? This desire to kill a man, to extinguish a light, to stifle a human speech, to cool a sacred fire which warms us all.
Isn’t it weird to want to make children dream while keeping them in total darkness?
The journey of Mohammed Mogouchkov says a lot about the gap that separated the common citizens of the republic from his family. Mohammed will never have lived under the same French roof as you and me. But yet France is quite big and we have learned that. How can we not fall in love with life and dream of a better life taken under its wing? Maybe because he never would have been. Recently (October 2, 2023) listed as “S” (In France, an S file is an information sheet from the wanted persons file.) and registered in the Report processing file for the prevention of terrorist radicalization, he and his family were repeatedly denied asylum since 2013. Mohammed has remained persona non grata since his arrival in France in 2008 at the age of 5. Having crossed two continents but nevertheless having to confine himself to his family circle, this narrow and delimited space.
Fates! Fatality! It is still us, children of the light who are in fear, thrown down.
On this innocuous Friday morning of classes at the Gambetta high school in Arras, injustice struck us again. Making this Friday the 13th a day of misfortune and unbearable pain for any spirit of reason. A lucky day for obscurantists and superstitious people.
Let us not lose sight of this star in the night, teaching will always be given by the teacher who is murdered. We must always learn and revise our lessons, remain hopeful as yet another bearer of light reaches heaven, this victor.
Let us pay tribute and honor the memory of all the teachers attacked as they were raising us! May they rest in peace, assured that we know this faculty of the mind, to preserve and remember these things.
