Alex Duval Smith in Aulnay-sous-Bois
Sunday November 6, 2005 The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1635375,00.html
Night falls and the violence can begin. The blue light of a passing police van flashes across the sweat on 17-year-old HB's forehead. 'They're provoking us by driving around like that. We are not going to stop until Sarkozy resigns,' he says. For five nights in a row, HB and his mates have been battling with riot police on the notorious Mille-Mille housing estate, buried deep in the high-rise suburbs that line the motorway to Charles de Gaulle airport. They have burnt cars, businesses and a school but, really, they want the head of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
'He should go and fuck himself,' says HB, who was born in France of Algerian parents. 'We are not germs. He said he wants to clean us up. He called us louts. He provoked us on television. He should have said sorry for showing us disrespect, but now it is too late.'
HB's views are clear. 'The only way to get the police here is to set fire to something. The fire brigade does not come here without the police, and the police are Sarkozy's men so they are the ones we want to see.'
All the dustbins were burnt long ago. 'Cars make good barricades and they burn nicely, and the cameras like them. How else are we going to get our message across to Sarkozy? It is not as if people like us can just turn up at his office.'
HB, who is at college training to be a chef, claims he likes his estate and the unity he feels between people with Caribbean parents, black Africans, a few people of standard French descent and first, second and third-generation Moroccans and Algerians who have made up the majority of Aulnay-sous-Bois's population for the past 30 years.
The eldest of five, his father came to France at the age of seven and has been employed ever since by the municipality. HB feels a 'tremendous togetherness' at Mille-Mille, but he does not feel 'French'.
Jobs? 'There are a few at the airport and at the Citroën plant, but it's not even worth trying if your name is Mohamed or Abdelaoui.'
A cannabis joint is passed around and HB admits the parallel economy reigns in 'Neuf-Trois' (93, the administrative number of the Seine-Saint-Denis département of which Aulnay is part). 'The police are hypocrites. Many of them - though not the riot police who've been bussed in from the sticks in the past few days - know us. They know there are hash deals and who is doing them. They also know something that Sarkozy has not understood: just because you live on a housing estate doesn't make you a criminal.'
When asked if he considers himself integrated in France, HB claims that is not his aspiration. 'I am not sure what the word means. I am part of Mille-Mille and Seine-Saint-Denis, but I am not part of Sarkozy's France, or even the France of our local mayor whom we never see. At the same time, I realise I am French, because when I visit my parents' village in Algeria that doesn't feel like home either.'
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