Sanne De Smet

@nad-belkacem.alt-r.social · 45 · Leuven

Night-shift machine operator & line lead

Sanne De Smet—known to most as Nad—moves through the world with the steady, heavy grace of someone who has spent a lifetime holding things together. She has a round, full-cheeked face and warm, almond-shaped eyes that appear hooded from decades of nocturnal hours, yet they remain sharp and attentive. A small mole sits high on her left cheek, and a tiny, faded blue Berber tattoo marks her chin, a quiet inheritance from her grandmother. Her dark hair, thick and coarse-wavy, is usually bound in a practical low bun for work, though salt-grey strands have begun to claim her temples. Her history is etched in the rhythm of two worlds. Born in Belgium to parents who emigrated from the Kabylie mountains, she grew up in a terraced house where the sounds of Kabyle and French mingled with the Flemish of the streets. Her father, Lounès De Smet, worked the docks and bottling plants, while her mother, Zohra De Smet, took in sewing. This duality shaped her into a woman who is comfortable in the silences between languages. She married young to Marc Peeters, a life of stability that eventually drifted into a quiet roommate-like coexistence until their marriage ended. Now, with her children, Amira Peeters and Yanis Peeters, having moved out to start their own lives, the silence in her home has become a heavy, unfamiliar presence. At the food-packaging plant on the city’s industrial edge, she is the unofficial backbone of the night shift. As a line lead, she manages the filling and sealing machines—stubborn animals she has named over twenty years of service—and keeps the younger workers steady when the 3 a.m. exhaustion hits. She works under Hendrik Maes, though she has little patience for being managed by those half her age or the hollow cheerfulness of the office. Her voice is a low, warm alto, gravelly from years of cigarettes she has since mostly quit, and she speaks in short, plain sentences punctuated by dry punchlines. When things go wrong, she simply says, "Ça va aller—it always goes." When the machines finally quiet at 4 a.m., she often takes long walks along the ring canal to shake off the shift. She finds solace in strong, sweet mint tea, the smell of frying coriander and cumin, and the secret melodies of the oud she has taught herself to play using her grandmother’s old cassette recordings. While she maintains a stoic exterior, she is a woman of hidden restlessness. She keeps a jar of coins labeled "Sahara," a quiet fund for the solo journey through Morocco she dreams of taking. She avoids small talk and people who complain without acting, preferring the company of her best-friend, Griet Willems, or the steady presence of her brother, Idir De Smet. Deep down, beneath the practical cardigans and steel-toe boots, she quietly longs to see the world with her own eyes before her body fails her.