Black Bazaar (11 page)

The Arab on the corner told us we should waste no time in moving apartments, that it would be hard when the child started moving on all fours. Our little one would break everything in the studio. He said that children like scampering about and poking their noses everywhere in the home. And in a space as cramped as ours, Henriette would feel like a prisoner in a cage. He promised to help us out because some compatriots of his worked for a property agency in Charenton-Le-Pont. But you couldn't mention the banlieue to my ex, even if it was the closest one to Paris. Just hearing the word “banlieue” was enough to make her break out in cold sores …

So from time to time we got bottles, milk and nappies for free. I didn't feel comfortable with it, but how could I say no to the Arab on the corner without offending him? We took it all and stored it in a corner of our studio. My ex was happy, but not me. To clear her conscience, she used to say:

“Why let it bother you? It's not like we asked him for anything! He's mainly doing it for our daughter because in the Bible or the Koran the children are the bosses. The Kingdom of Heaven is for them. Plus he knows that by giving to the children God will pay him back many times over, and that's not counting the twenty-two virgins he'll have automatic right to in Paradise as a reward for his upright behaviour on earth.”

And I would object:

“We're not the only ones with a child in this neighbourhood! Why doesn't he give to all the familes with children?”

“Look, it's because we live right opposite his bazaar! And anyway, I've seen him giving sweets and bananas to other children …”

* * *

Since then, whenever I've walked into his shop on my way back from Jip's, the Arab on the corner gets excited, he holds onto my pack of Pelforts so he can talk to me for longer. He shows me his till, complains that money isn't worth what it used to be in the days of the new franc and the old franc. He curses the big supermarkets for killing off small businesses. He talks to me about his family who stayed behind in his country, about the house he's building over there, about the competition in our neighbourhood with the Pakistanis and the Chinese who aren't cutting him any slack:

“Business isn't what it used to be when I came to this country. Now there are more shopkeepers than customers! That's globalisation for you: Chinese and Pakistanis at the end of every street, what can I say? I swear, my African brother, these Chinese and Pakistanis, they buy up everything! They've got money that turns up from their countries via the sewers of Paris! Did you hear they're setting up shop in that country of yours
too, all the way over there? In your opinion what on earth are they going to do in the heart of darkness now that slavery has been abolished and the colonisers have either packed up their bags or else been driven out by the natives, eh? Our new settlers are the Chinese and Pakistanis that you can see in our streets. They are crafty, they say they are different from our former masters and that we all come from developing countries, that we are all the third world, and they pretend to build us palaces of the people so that our parliamentarians can sit in session in leather armchairs with air conditioning and a fountain in the courtyard, is this what is going to put bread on the table for the ordinary people, eh, my African brother? A settler is a settler even if he builds you a great big palace of the people! Now listen, I'm going to explain to you how the Chinese and the Pakistanis arrived in France and settled here by using the antelope tactic: first, they scattered in great numbers, then they gently started to get themselves established, without making any noise, whereas you Blacks and us Arabs when we arrive somewhere the first offence we commit is trouble with the neighbours! The Chinese and the Pakistanis? Those people are crafty! You don't see them on the eight o'clock news burning cars, they don't go out on strike with the other immigrants, they smile at everybody. And that smile is key to their business. If all the illegals in this country smiled I don't think we'd ever see them catching charter flights home, they'd
travel back business class with Air France. I swear, my African brother!”

I'm champing at the bit as I listen to him. But he hasn't finished yet.

He's off again, with even more energy than before:

“We woke up one morning as we were opening our shops to find that the Chinese and the Pakistanis were there already and they'd bought everything without taking out a single loan because these people have their own banks. But when I ask for a loan here, it's a whole to-do. The banker as good as wants to see my bicycle licence and ask whether I eat with my fingers or a fork! And the result is: my sort of business hardly exists in the neighbourhood any more. We are the last Mohicans. No more Arab on the corner, it's over! Even my small business here, well, I've had enough, it will end up in the hands of the Chinese and the Pakistanis. But we are the kind of people who sacrifice ourselves for others. There's no denying the fact that we're a public service. When I sell my merchandise, I don't see the colour of my customers' skin. I sell to the poor, and I sell to the rich, I sell to the handicapped, I sell to the Blacks, I sell to the Arabs, I sell to all the races that exist down here below because whatever race we may be, we all have red blood …”

He falls silent. I can almost see the tears in his eyes. He turns away from me as if to hide them.

And then he straightens himself up, he stares at me and off he goes again:

“My African brother, this is a serious situation, we all need to help each other out here. This country wouldn't exist if it weren't for us, do you get my gist, eh? We have always been there each time France was at war even though we could have stayed at home. But have the Pakistanis and the Chinese helped France? Have they shed their blood for this country? The day when we Arabs on the corner aren't here any more, this country will lose everything, and I mean everything. France will lose her Arabs on the corner! Are you getting my gist? And you Blacks too, my African brothers, be vigilant, because after us, it will be your turn! They say there are too many people working on the black market, have you heard that? So if you all leave this country, it's true there won't be any more Blacks, but there won't be any work either. Enough is enough, I say. They shout at us on the telly, on the radio and in the newspapers, but are we the ones digging the hole in the social? We still have one thing, my African brother, and that is the African Union, this is the only way we will build the African Unity of the Enlightened Guide, Muammar Gaddafi!”

He says all that while holding onto my pack of Pelforts. I cough to let him know I've got to go home now, and he starts up again:

“Wait, hold on a minute, my African brother, I have something very important to tell you because this world is falling apart before our very eyes, and we're doing nothing about it. And I'm not even talking about
the hole in the social that's as big as you like, I'm just talking about what I can see before me, in this street, in front of your building. I'm sixty-three and a half years old, I grew up with the strictest respect for my parents, but also for strangers, and I'm proud of that. Respect forms the basis of society, are you still getting my gist, my African brother? Do you know what France's great problem is? Well, I'm going to tell you what the real problem is for France. Don't listen to what they say on the telly, it's just meant to confuse us. France's problem lies elsewhere, it is deep, it is in the morals. Even the unemployment is not it, even the hole in the social is not it, France's problem it is RESPECT! It is a legacy, a very important legacy, RESPECT. But the youth of today, what do they do, eh? Well let me tell you, they break everything! They think that they are smarter than their parents! So they talk when their parents are talking. They bring their girlfriends or boyfriends home with them to go jiggy-jiggy in their bedrooms when in my day we hid in the sewers for that. And they do that thing in full view of their family. They don't even go to school any more, they don't read even the Koran any more, are you getting my gist? I ask you! And as for the girls? It is complete mayhem, and their parents are guilty for letting them wear mini-skirts, jeans with holes on the butts, red thongs and dragon tattoos, as well as T-shirts with their breasts for all to see! How are the rascals not supposed to rape them, eh? It's not the
rapists' fault, it's the girls displaying their merchandise who are to blame. When you go walking with a bone in the street, the dogs in the neighbourhood will chase after it, I swear to you! But when you put that bone in the bottom of your basket, the neighbourhood dogs don't know about the bone, and that is the end of the matter. Now, I realise that dogs can also smell there's a bone hidden somewhere, because, don't believe it, my African brother, French dogs aren't as stupid as you'd think, they've also got a very strong nose like the African dogs. But me, I've never seen a dog of any nationality whatsoever opening the bag of a normal woman to take out a bone hidden in there. And when I see these weird girls passing by in front of my shop – and some of them even come here to provoke me – I think to myself the world is going to the dogs, big time, I swear, my African brother. And whose fault is all this? Can you answer me that, eh? IT'S THE FAULT OF THE WEST! Do you call it civilisation, what we're seeing in this country? Do you call it development, what we're seeing in this country? I'd rather my country remained under-developed until the end of time, provided it doesn't follow this path, you do get my gist, don't you …?”

I nod while wondering when he'll finally bring his rant to an end.

“Today, it's on me,” he declares. “The bottles of Pelfort are a gift from me, and so are these bananas, my brother, we are all Africans together!”

“Thanks very much …”

“How are your wife and your daughter? Still on holiday in the home country?”

“Still there, yes.”

“Lucky them. With this shitty weather we're having, if I were in their shoes I'd stay in the sun for a long time … She's a real go-getter, your wife! Very brave, very obedient, always working or looking after your little one!”

“Thank you …”

I must get used
to the idea that Original Colour is back in the home country with the Hybrid who plays the tom-toms in a group nobody's ever heard of here, but from what I hear it's a hot ticket over there and normal girls have fainting fits during its shitty live gigs as if they were at a James Brown concert.

Do people from the home country know what real music is? All they do is writhe, go into a trance as soon as the drum beat starts. Is playing the tom-toms in a group a respectable activity, eh? Can you come home at the end of the day and say to your woman, honey, I play the tom-toms, that's my job and here are my payslips? Is that what's going to fill the hole in the social and take the brakes off social mobility? And to think that Roger the French-Ivorian wants me to write about the tom-toms or drums in my diary. I ask you! The tomtoms are for people who like a night-time racket, end of story. That's why, unlike the Arab on the corner, I have respect for the Chinese and the Pakistanis. They're decent guys who've unfairly got a bad reputation for working like dogs and never saying a word when they're not harming anyone. At least they don't play the tomtoms
in this country. The day someone invents silent tom-toms, a lot of old negroes will lose their reason for living. The tom-tom is something we should get rid of for good because its time is up. In the past they used to have fun sounding this instrument in the cotton fields of the American South to tell the other slaves watch out the master's coming with his dogs, make it look like you're working or else he's going to whip you or sell you to another master who's even more wicked and who'll chop the legs off any slave who makes a run for it. It was also with their tom-toms that these slaves wept for the faraway suns of the black continent when they had the blues. And it was also with the tom-toms that the Africans greeted the suns of independence, but what they didn't know was that they'd find themselves going from Scylla to Charybdis. Now is no longer a time for having fun and working in the cotton fields, now is no longer the dawn of independence, but we beat those tom-toms from morning to night, to the point of leading happily settled women astray …

* * *

Of course, I could always have gone for the Hybrid, sent a few friends his way who would have rearranged his face back in the home country. But what good would that have done? I'm not a man who enjoys trouble. I'm polite and, unlike Mr Hippocratic, I'm very sociable, I'm open to all sorts of debate and I'm conscious of the way our society
of the spectacle is evolving. I am familiar with the ways of the world. But not with fighting and conflict. I don't like arguments and disputes. In fact, when a fight breaks out among the guys from the banlieues at the Gare du Nord or métro Marcadet-Poissonniers, I don't separate the fighters, I distance myself from the battlefield, I let the belligerents fix up their self-portraits the way they want to. You should never disturb contemporary artists, just leave them to express the madness of their art when they paint their
Guernica
. Let them fight according to their rules, I'm not going to play at being referee. Fighting often amounts to a lack of communication, by which I mean ignorance about the ways of the world.

So when there is an argument or a fight I take off because just one word from a bystander, and they stop arguing or waging war, and turn on you instead, as it says in one of La Fontaine's fables, your ears will be mistaken for the horns of the animal that wounded the Lion and you will endure the wrath of the king of beasts. It's thanks to my extreme cautiousness that my criminal record is still clean, and it's not everybody who has a record like mine. It's so clean they could use it when they're short on forms at the ministry of justice. Not only that but I don't hang out with delinquents, I don't keep company with criminals, I don't know any judges and I've never sat opposite a lawyer …