Something you might not know about me is, I grew up in the banlieue of Paris, what Jean-Louis and Sophie would call le ghetto.
It’s true we heard a couple of gun shots (US friends, I know you must be smiling!), it’s true a couple of fathers lost it and killed the mother, the kids, and the dog with a knife. It’s true that 50% of the population was unemployed. It’s true that one kid, to kill a teacher he didn’t like, brought a cocktail molotov to my middle school—which was already not among the most reputable in France. France loves ranking and my middle school was the very last one.
But something about my hood is, it taught me a lot about justice, revenge and accountability.
One night as I was walking home, I heard what seemed to be at least 2 men running for their lives right behind me. When you’re a femme in those neighbourhoods, you develop some kind of hyper vigilance that allows you to know those kind of things.
They ran past me, it was actually 3 of them. One, running ahead and trying to run away from his aggressors was wearing a black suit. The two running after him were typical dudes from my neighbourhood—jogging pants, hoodies, Nike sneakers we all call “Requins”. Requins—or the Air Max Plus—were released in 1998. As soon as they were released, they were embraced by street culture, which nicknamed it “Requin” (the shark) due to its aggressive style and exoskeleton reminiscent of gills.
Seeing those on white queers who never gone to bed hungry makes me sick today. But anyways.
Right in front of me, those 2 dudes stopped the suit guy, and fucked him up so bad on the concrete, I froze.
And here I was, standing on the curb, with my groceries in plastic bags.
What the fuck should I do????
At some point, the 2 guys stopped when they had enough. While giving him a last kick, they said to him: “if you ever try to steal from a mother who is doing her groceries with her kids, we’ll kill you motherfucker. That’s not how we do in our hood.”
I stood there, speechless. The two guys left the suited guy on the curb, blood all over his face. He looked at me, full of apology. I shrugged and said, “Dude, you deserved it,” and hurried back to my student apartment. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t regret knowing from the start what was about to happen—I probably would have enjoyed the scene more. Stealing a mom in our hood? No.
The next week, on our local newspaper, the suited guy’s mother was on the first page. She was trying to make a case that her son had been mistreated by “des racailles” (thugs), and that her son was “quelqu’un de bien”.
I was gutted. Women getting behind their father, husband, sons, random guys who are pieces of shit is much less random that I’d like it to be. The opposite is waayyyy less true. Figure out why.
What keeps us from being accountable to ourselves and to each other?
