A piece I wrote in 2023 during the riot in Paris.
I’d always looked up to France to see the future of mankind’s struggle with itself and the promise of survival. She always asked the tough questions notwithstanding their pedantic or philosophical bent to herself that other nations would instead have swept under the rug of political expediency and the lack of will to look at their own selves in the mirror.
Last summer, when I visited the city of Paris, there was a sense of unease lingering when I stepped outside the refuge of past glory and grandeur in the hallowed museums and palaces. Notre Dame Cathedral burnt causing serious damages. You couldn’t travel anywhere without hushed but constant reminders to watch your wallet in subways or walking into shabby alleyways where groups of young men of North African descent milled around.
The Airbnb in Saint-Denise where I stayed had the essential features of French colonial architecture with double doors, windows, and vaulted ceilings. Across the apartment right above the subway station, rebuilding the stadium for the Olympics progressed in earnestness. The Basilica where Gothic Architecture was born in Saint-Denise. The landlord lived far away and said she inherited the house from her mother and didn’t seem too excited about being in the area. There were only Middle Eastern and North African food joints in the streets as the pedestrians and fellow riders in the subway hinted about the imaginary border crossing where all the French men had gone! I met a Tunisian man on the way to Louvre who lost his flight attendant job after covid. He moved to France more than a year ago and living with his fiancé in the hope to find a job sooner than later.
Adolf Hitler reportedly asked his generals if Paris was burning to ensure that they followed his order to destroy the city before the Allies would recapture it. The French Resistance formed by a coalition of students, aristocrats, Catholics, Muslims, liberals, anarchists, Communists, and even some fascists did not allow the Nazi dictator to succeed.
Paris is burning again – this time however the battle is between Frenchmen and their own shadow of colonial history and liberal values. Immigrants from colonies and refugees from Islamic nations have joined the march to strike at the nation’s apathy evoking the long history of the French Revolution, Coalminers procession (The Germinal, Emile Zola), and the Students riot at Sorbonne.
The mindless looting and widespread destruction of properties along with apprehensions about the rioters’ religion have sparked anger and are fueling further consolidation of hardline parties. Violent reprisals and the rise of anti-immigration sentiment may soar. Meursault (The Stranger, Albert Camus) in France cannot afford to be indifferent to life of the nameless Arab or indulge himself in existential crises anymore, for he is confronted with monsters from the colonial past of his own making and medieval age he refused to acknowledge – face to face.
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