by Abdel Sellou
“Abdel, they killed someone in front of you!”
“It was nothing, Maman. It was like an accident or like a movie that I could have seen on TV. I was there, but I wasn’t part of it, it wasn’t me. It didn’t do anything to me.”
Neither did their sermons.
II
The End of Innocence
10
I took advantage of my parents’ weakness and didn’t see anything wrong with it. At six, seven years max, I had said good-bye to childhood and the sailboats in the Tuileries to take a one-way trip to the state of wild independence. I watched, took stock of humanity. I saw that it was just like it is with animals: there’s one dominator for many dominated. I figured that with a little bit of the survival instinct and intelligence, you could make a place for yourself.
I didn’t realize that Belkacem and Amina were watching over me, in their own way. Whatever you might say about it, they accepted their role with what little they had, and I accepted them. And I called them Papa, Maman.
“Papa, buy me a new comic book.”
“Maman, pass me the salt.”
I asked them for what I wanted by giving them orders. I didn’t know it was supposed to happen any differently. They obviously didn’t know it either, since they didn’t correct me. Again, they didn’t have the instructions. They thought that loving parents let their kids do anything. They didn’t know that you sometimes had to forbid them things and that it was for their own good. They didn’t have a good handle on the rules of proper society, the kind that require politeness all the time and emphasize the importance of behaving at the dinner table. They weren’t going to teach me these rules, or ask me to respect them.
I came home many an evening with punishment homework. My mother watched me copying tens, hundreds of lines: I must be quiet and stay seated during class. I must not hit my classmates during recess. I must not throw my metal ruler at the teacher. I’d clear off a corner of the kitchen table, spread out my papers, and start my writing marathon. Maman, who was making dinner next to me, might dry her hands on her apron, come up behind me, put her hand on my shoulder, and look at my chicken scrawl piling up on the paper.
“That’s a lot of homework, huh, Abdel? That’s good!”
She could barely read French.
So she didn’t read the comments at the bottom of my report card. “Difficult child who only thinks about fighting,” “Attends class as though he’s a visitor . . . when he attends,” “Child in total rejection of the educational system.”
She also didn’t read the summons from the teachers, the school director, later the junior high principal, the vocational school director. To all of them, I said:
“My parents work. They don’t have time.”
I forged my father’s signature.
Even now, I’m sure that only parents who know the French school system and have actually gone through it attend the meetings and appointments for their kids. You have to know how school works and accept the way it works to be a part of it. And most of all, you have to want it. Why would Amina want something she didn’t even know existed? For her, the roles were clear: Her husband worked and brought home the money. She did the cleaning, cooking, and laundry. School took care of our education. She didn’t consider her son’s character, which couldn’t tolerate any kind of rule. She didn’t know me.
Nobody really knew me, except maybe my brother, who was afraid of everything. I used him sometimes, for little jobs that didn’t require any courage. Other than that, we barely talked to each other. When he was deported, in 1986, it made no difference to me. I looked down on him a little: he got himself kicked out of the only country he’d ever known over administrative paperwork. You had to be pretty dumb . . . I hung out with pals from the projects. I say pals because we weren’t friends. What’s a friend good for? Talking to? I didn’t have anything to say because nothing got to me. I didn’t need anybody.
At home, I didn’t open the letters from Algeria. The people who wrote them didn’t interest me. They weren’t part of my world anymore, and couldn’t even remember their faces: they never came to France and we never went there. My parents—Belkacem and Amina—were simple people, but not stupid. They knew we lived better in Paris than in Algiers; they weren’t nostalgic about their hometown. They never piled the mattresses on top of the station wagon for the big summer migration. I had three sisters and a brother on the other side of the Mediterranean. They didn’t exist for me any more than I did for them. We were strangers to each other. In fact, I was a stranger to the entire world, free as the wind, uncontrollable and uncontrolled.
11
Actually, this judge- for-kids thing isn’t bad. Since I don’t get my money from the government anymore, she gives me a little allowance. Enough to buy me a kebab and fries and pay for my transportation. Every three weeks, I go to her office and she hands me my envelope. If I show up with shoes that are borderline too small for my growing feet, she adds a few bills. She hasn’t figured out that the nicer she is, the more I ask for. And it works! At the worst, she gives me a speech.
“Abdel Yamine, you’re not stealing anything, right?”
“Oh no, ma’am!”
“That sweatshirt looks brand-new. It’s nice, by the way!”
“My father bought it for me. He works, he can afford it!”
“I know your father is a hardworking man, Abdel Yamine . . . but you, have you found any training?”
“Not yet.”
“Well what do you do with your days then? I see that you’re wearing a track jacket and you like athletic shoes. Do you play any sports?”
“Yeah. Kind of.”
I’m running. I’m always running. I run as fast as I can to get away from the cops who’re chasing me from Trocadéro all the way to the Bois de Boulogne. I sleep in trains in the suburbs, but I don’t sleep much. Once or twice a week, I get a room at a Formule 1 hotel so I can take a shower. I only wear new clothes. I leave them behind when I want to change.
Tourists rush to the foot of the Eiffel Tower to take photos of themselves. They stand right on the axis with Trocadéro, click-clack-Kodak, the memory’s made and the camera almost put away in the bag: these Americans don’t really take care of their toys. They hold their cameras negligently, dangling from their hands, they’re loaded down with raincoats, water bottles, bags they wear on shoulder straps that get in the way of their walking. I give a demonstration to the younger kids looking to get into this line of work. I provide their training. I get closer, hands in my pockets, with the innocent, blissful look of a guy taking in the view and, suddenly, as quick as a cobra, I snatch the camera and take off toward the east. I cross the Trocadéro gardens, head down the boulevard Delessert, then the rue de Passy, and disappear into La Muette metro station. By the time the American realizes what’s happened and tells the police, I’m back in the neighborhood and the merchandise has already been offloaded. The field is well organized and its headquarters is the Étienne Marcel metro station. There you can always find a taker for a video recorder, a Walkman, a watch, a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. I don’t bother with wallets; they’re not effective enough: since credit cards showed up, people almost never keep cash on them, so it’s not worth it. With technological devices, I easily guarantee myself a nice return. And what’s more, no labor costs.
The guys that hang around Trocadéro have no common sense. Or they haven’t picked a side yet: thieves versus honest people. They’re the sons of storekeepers, middle managers, teachers, working-class people, these idiots who only skip classes one day out of two, who are looking for a thrill, but not really sure they want to find it. They’re willing to take risks for me, small, brown-eyed, nothing special. They think I’m cool, they’re lonely, they’d want to slum it a little, but since they weren’t lucky enough to grow up in the projects like me, they don’t know the ways to work that we all learn at the foot of our buildings. They act like puppies who run back with the stick their masters threw and pant with their
tongues hanging out hoping for a piece of sugar. If necessary, they hit for me. They give me the merchandise that they aren’t capable of offloading anyway. They barely expect a thank-you and they don’t get a cut. I feel bad for them. I think they’re really nice.
12
Once, twice, twenty times I get taken in. It’s always the same dance. Handcuffs and a more or less lengthy custody. Today I receive the honor for peeing on a statue of some Marshal Foch on his faithful steed, like Lucky Luke on Jolly Jumper.
“Degradation of public property. In the cell! See you tomorrow.”
“My parents are going to be worried!”
“On the contrary, we’ll let them know. For tonight, at least, they’ll know you’re safe and sound.”
I get my sandwich delivered right to my new place of residence. I give twenty clams to a cop who looks at me sideways—he’s afraid of bad guys. He’s going to do my shopping at the corner store. When I don’t like his face, I rip him a new one.
“Hey, moron, I told you ketchup-mustard, no mayo! You can’t even take an order! This department’s seriously screwed with people like you!”
A drunk is sleeping off his wine in one corner of the cell, and an old man is whining in the other. A voice comes from one of the neighboring offices.
“Can it, Sellou!”
“Uh, Officer, sir, your white guy didn’t give me my change.”
So the voice, now bored, says:
“Rookie, give him his money back . . .”
The other mumbles that he wasn’t planning to keep it. I enjoy my meal.
I always operate in the same neighborhood, so I always run into the same officers (more like the same officers run into me!). Over time, we get to know each other; we’re almost close. Sometimes they warn me.
“Sellou, watch out, the clock’s ticking . . . you know after your next birthday, we can put you away for good.”
I crack up. Not because I don’t believe them: I do believe them, because they said so. But for one thing, I can’t be afraid of something I don’t know, and for another, I have every reason to think that prison isn’t so bad. And you get out fast. I see it with the Mendy, those groups of Senegalese who like to have their fun with girls. They go down regularly for gang rape. They get six months, tops, come out a bit thicker around the waist, a fresh new haircut, then they get straight back to business, treat themselves to new, young meat. Only once, one of them got three years because he put the girl’s eye out with a crowbar. What he did was really bad, but regardless, we know we’ll see him again soon. So prison really doesn’t scare me. If it were all that bad, the ones who’d already been there at least once would do anything not to go back. Frankly, I can enjoy my sandwich in peace; I don’t see any reason to shake in my boots. Tomorrow I get out, warmer weather’s on the way, the girls will be wearing summer dresses, I’ll be back on the prowl, nights out with the guys, sleepless nights between Orsay and Pontoise, Pontoise and Versailles, Versailles and Dourdan-la-Fôret. I’ve got a nice little stash in my bank account. Almost twelve thousand francs. I have a place to crash in Marseille, another in Lyon, and another close to La Rochelle. I’m going to have a nice vacation. After that, we’ll see. I’m not thinking any further ahead.
13
I didn’t do my eighteenth birthday justice. It slipped my mind. I was busy with other stuff, probably. But you can be sure the cops had circled the date on their calendar because when it arrived they didn’t waste too much time in getting ahold of me. They came at me all at once, when I was least expecting it, even though I had no reason to run that day. I was just about to leave for vacation at the beach! My turn to look like a happy idiot: I didn’t know that the tourist complaints that had been piling up for months could put me away for years. I really lived like a wild animal, without any notion of time passing. As long as I was a minor, I couldn’t be judged for petty crimes, so they couldn’t sentence me. As an adult, everything changed, and the things I did before turning eighteen, written in red on my file, didn’t play in my favor. If I’d straightened up after April 25, 1989, my eighteenth birthday, they wouldn’t have had anything on me. Completely oblivious, careless—a happy idiot—I kept on doing what I’d always done, bad stuff, that is, and it didn’t last long.
I was walking down the hall of the metro at Trocadéro, a wide and long hall where the wind blows in every season, making the caps on old guys’ heads and silk scarves around ladies’ necks flap around. I saw a couple coming toward me, both in jeans, him with a camera on a strap around his neck, her in a beige raincoat. I hesitated for a second: was that camera worth it? Nah, I’d already done well for the day, I could call it quits. Lucky for me. The couple was actually two undercover cops. When they got to where I was, I felt an arm slide under my elbow and a hand grab my wrist. In a flash, I was immobilized by four people (where did the other three come from?), forced down on my stomach, handcuffed, and lifted up just as fast, in this horizontal position, heading toward the exit. The whole thing only took a few seconds. A real kidnapping.
Gray concrete, smashed chewing gum, thin legs perched on stilettos, cinched pants resting on leather heels, worn-out tennis shoes topped with hairy calves, a used metro ticket, an old paper tissue, a Twix wrapper, cigarette butts by the dozens . . . now I understand why Superman never flies low. They finally stand me back up.
“I don’t know you! Are you new? Why are you arresting me?”
I wait to hear the official reason for my presence in this pretty little police car, all nice and clean. I definitely don’t offer up a reason to put me inside if they don’t already have one.
“Assault and theft. We saw you yesterday; we even got nice pictures of you. And again this morning, by the way!”
“Oh! And where are we going?”
“You’ll see when you get there.”
In fact, no, I don’t see. I don’t recognize this place. They must have built a phony precinct, like the phony betting parlor in The Sting, with Robert Redford and Paul Newman. The same dirty walls, the same jaded civil servants typing up their reports on noisy typewriters, the same indifference toward the defendant . . . They set me down in a chair. The person who owns this office is out for the moment, but I’m told he’ll be right back.
“No problem, I’ve got plenty of time . . .”
I don’t worry any more than all the other times. I’ll get out in a day or two at the latest. Whatever happens, I’ll have had a new experience.
“I won’t explain the process—you know it!” says an inspector sitting down heavily across from me.
“Well, yeah, you always . . .”
“From now on, you’re in police custody. I’ll question you and take your deposition. Then I’ll send it to the prosecutor, who’ll decide whether or not you’ll face charges. You probably realize it’s more than likely.”
“Okay.”
Attentively, I watch the couple from the metro walking between the desks. He still has his camera around his neck; she’s taken off her raincoat. They don’t pay any attention to me. They’ve moved on to something else, another rascal, another miserable case.
French citizens, tourists, brave people, sleep in peace. The police are working to ensure your security.
14
From the police station, I was transferred to the Palais de Justice. The prosecutor was waiting for me. Our meeting went down really fast.
“I see in your file that you were seen on Tuesday and Wednesday on the Trocadéro esplanade committing several misdemeanors with various tourists: you stole a video camera, a camera, two Walkmen, you committed assault and battery on two men trying to resist you . . . Do you admit to these charges?
“Yes.”
“Do you agree to go before the court immediately, with the assistance of a court-appointed attorney?”
“Yes.”
He says to the two officers waiting by the door: “Thank you, gentlemen, you can take him down to holding.”
The holding cell is in the basement of the Pa
lais de Justice. The light stays on around the clock. They took my watch and shoved me into a cell, and from there, I lost all notion of time. It didn’t seem long or short to me; I wasn’t impatient or anxious. The French government kindly offered me a piece of bread, a serving of Camembert, an orange, some cookies, and a bottle of water. My stomach could stand a diet like this. I thought, Whatever happens, I’ll always have food and water. Anyway, I’m not controlling things anymore. I dozed on my bunk, the third one, just under the ceiling. Strangely, I had everything I needed.
The sounds I’m hearing aren’t familiar. Some cry, scream, slam their fists on their cell door: addicts going through withdrawal. You’d think we were in an asylum. The show going on here could make you laugh.
There are two Arabs there, one small and wiry, the other big and fat. The first paces back and forth in the tiny cell, talking to the second, sitting patiently on the bottom bed. The Laurel and Hardy of petty crime.
“This is bad! This is bad! My wife, my sons, they never worked. What’re they gonna do without me? If I go down for months, in jail, they won’t eat!”
The fat one laughs, but he’s a nice guy and tries to reassure the other.
“Come on, don’t worry . . . if your wife has to work, then she’ll do it! Your kids, same thing! And when you get back home, you’ll find your bank account fuller than it is today, you know!”
“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know!”
“Why are you here anyway?”
“For a wallet . . .”
Now I can’t help bursting out in laughter. I’m eighteen and already into big crime compared to this guy who could easily be my father. I don’t say anything. I don’t want to make enemies, even weak ones, but I think it’s pathetic to get thrown inside, at fifty-five plus, for stealing a wallet. And he’s freaking out, too! It’s already unbelievable that he’s here for so little, but it’s insane that he’s making himself sick over it. And I can’t imagine the French justice system would spend one franc of its tiny budget to sentence a loser like him. Clearly, he’s not putting the country in danger, and if prison has the power of dissuasion, it’ll definitely work on this type of guy.