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Jamal Said |
Hero seeks the girl he saved from fire
Traumatised, his doctors believe a meeting may help
FORMER footballer Jamal Said didn’t hesitate when he saw a young party-goer run screaming through a crowded hotel function-room trailing flames.
As her fellow guests fled in panic, the £5-an-hour agency-employed waiter flung himself at the teenage girl, wrestled her to the floor, and smothered her burning ball-gown.
His own trousers and shirt smouldering, he kept tearing at her burning clothes until she was free of the clinging flames.
In the months that followed, however, Jamal found he couldn’t stop thinking about the night at the Holiday Inn, Camden Lock, when he had gone to the aid of the unknown guest – and he is still searching for her, in the hope that by meeting her he can end the nightmares that have plagued him ever since.
They had both been admitted to hospital on April 29 last year, by separate ambulances, and his last view of her was as she lay badly burnt, barely conscious of the treatment she was receiving.
Every night since, Jamal has dreamt about the episode, even after doctors prescribed him powerful anti-depressants – drugs which have hampered his daily life even as they have failed to soothe his sleep.
The 40-year-old Frenchman, who has picked up casual work through agencies since he came to live in Springbank Walk, Camden Town, a year ago, said: “In my dream I see her die – because in the last minute when I saw her she was trembling, then the ambulance came and took her. So for me, she is still lying there. For me she might be dead.”
He has found his behaviour change.
Increasingly forgetful and vague, he struggles to hold down jobs, has trouble sleeping, and has lost his instinct to help others – in short, has become a shadow of the man who had a career playing football for second-tier French club AS Beauvais before he came to the UK.
“The problem is becoming big every day,” he said. “If there are people who need help, I find I cannot help. This is not my nature.” It was his doctor in France who suggested that meeting the woman he saved might help.
He said: “I was trying find some solution for my nightmares. When I was at home I went in, and he said to me ‘you need to see this lady. You wake up every morning upset because you cannot see that she is alright’.”
But Jamal’s quest to find her has foundered on data protection laws.
The Holiday Inn has refused to give him her contact details, because its hands are tied by privacy rules.
The hotel has had ongoing legal discussions with the family of the girl, thought by Jamal to be about 14, since her dress caught light on a candle during a party at the Jamestown Road venue.
A spokesman said: “As a company, we cannot pass on private information about any guest.”
So Jamal is still searching, hoping that a reader of the New Journal may be able to help him get in touch with someone who was at the party – a celebration for around 180 teenagers from a college he doesn’t know on April 29 last year.
He insists that just a word from the victim could help.
“All the time, I haven’t wanted money or reward,” he said. “I just want to se the lady. In my heart it is very important to me.”
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