He wants to “bring self-transcendence to Mount Olympus and turn the neck of fatality”. Faouzi Derbouz, a 45-year-old Parisian suffering from a nosocomial infection which threatens him with paralysis, embarks on a 105-kilometre hike Friday at 10 a.m. through the twenty arrondissements of Paris, from the Hôtel de Ville to the Stade of France. He should achieve this on Saturday afternoon.
It will run in a clockwise spiral, following the order of the Parisian arrondissements and crossing the Seine on fifteen different bridges. “A challenge commensurate with the path traveled”, for this committed inhabitant of north-eastern Paris, who has been organizing night hikes in the capital since 2019, and who has nevertheless just spent four hospital stays in recent months.
A nosocomial infection that gradually paralyzes him
Far from feeling sorry for himself, this former controller of the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers (Sacem), now unemployed, multiplies projects between market and culture and dreams of professionalizing his activity with companies or communities. “Making people walk at night is still fantastic and more and more cities are getting into it”, he rejoices about a hobby which “reconciles us with the urban environment, opens us to the ‘unexpected and has no equal for creating links’ or ‘reuniting a team’.
For Faouzi Derbouz, everything changed in 2014 when, after an infiltration to treat chronic low back pain, he contracted a nosocomial infection, which gradually paralyzed his spine and regularly caused severe pain. Due to this “planned wear and tear”, this father of three children estimates that he “will take the way of the armchair at one time or another”. In the meantime, he intends to repeat the challenge a few weeks before the 2024 Games, which will coincide with the ten years of his infection. Accompanying persons will be able to join him halfway, before an expected arrival on Saturday afternoon at the Stade de France, in Seine-Saint-Denis, epicenter of the Paris Olympic Games.