In swirls of black cloth, veiled women drift towards the market. Bartering at stalls, almost all the women are in headscarves, penny-pinching for Made In Bangladesh clothes. You hear more Arabic than French, and shaking jangling plasticated sacks, shouting the Arabic for charity — zakat, zakat, zakat — are the Islamists, dominating it, raising coins for the mosque.
“People have gone back to religion,” smiles Idir Mazad over his euro-filled sack. He is a Salafist foot soldier. “And they have gone back hard. The French mistreated them. That’s why.” I flick a German euro into Idir’s sack and he begins to tell his story. Born in Tunisia, he is a 34-year-old security guard. Sometimes he moonlights as an Arabic teacher. “It all really started ten years ago.” As he talks I pick up his aura: one of calm, softness and distance. “Back in the 1990s people in Saint-Denis didn’t live and dress like true Muslims.” Everyone I speak to in the market keeps repeating this.
I wander down Rue de la République. The bourgeois France of boulangeries, épiceries, boucheries and charcuteries is all but gone, replaced by Chinese bargain shops, gloomy halal butchers and cut-price urban fashion shops stuffed with glitzy trainers, most of them obvious fakes. I find Ahlam shy under a hijab, behind the till at GoldFoot Urban Clothing. She smiles: “The French are very rare here now.” She blinks, hesitating, over three boxes of Nikes. “And lot of them are converts to Islam.”
Saint-Denis feels stigmatised, disorientated and vulnerable. Muslim men talk as if they are all suspects. “They call us all terrorists,” says Mbraki, a 34-year-old halal butcher. “We’re not!” But they nearly all also lament the loss of authority. Mbraki leans on his metallic counter, dripping red mutton behind him. “The French are too scared to come and shop in Saint-Denis since the attacks. There’s fear. There’s less order — less police, more druggies, more dealers and more thieves. It’s getting worse. I tell you — ten years ago it was not this bad.”
How does the French state explain all this? I take the butcher’s accusation to the prefect. Grey-haired Philippe Galli is Saint-Denis’s most powerful official and the president’s envoy to the department of Seine-Saint-Denis. His throaty, gravelly voice is accustomed to power.
“Those same people who say there is a lack of authority,” snaps the 60-year-old prefect, “are the same ones who refuse the police access when they try and enter. Those from the Maghreb, by origin, permit themselves to behave in ways that would be unthinkable where they came from.”
He tells me that the secret services are currently monitoring 700 people at risk of radicalisation in Saint-Denis, and the police are too frightened to enter alone most areas under his control. So what, on the outskirts of Paris, has gone so wrong?
“People have gone back to religion,” smiles Idir Mazad over his euro-filled sack. He is a Salafist foot soldier. “And they have gone back hard. The French mistreated them. That’s why.” I flick a German euro into Idir’s sack and he begins to tell his story. Born in Tunisia, he is a 34-year-old security guard. Sometimes he moonlights as an Arabic teacher. “It all really started ten years ago.” As he talks I pick up his aura: one of calm, softness and distance. “Back in the 1990s people in Saint-Denis didn’t live and dress like true Muslims.” Everyone I speak to in the market keeps repeating this.
I wander down Rue de la République. The bourgeois France of boulangeries, épiceries, boucheries and charcuteries is all but gone, replaced by Chinese bargain shops, gloomy halal butchers and cut-price urban fashion shops stuffed with glitzy trainers, most of them obvious fakes. I find Ahlam shy under a hijab, behind the till at GoldFoot Urban Clothing. She smiles: “The French are very rare here now.” She blinks, hesitating, over three boxes of Nikes. “And lot of them are converts to Islam.”
Saint-Denis feels stigmatised, disorientated and vulnerable. Muslim men talk as if they are all suspects. “They call us all terrorists,” says Mbraki, a 34-year-old halal butcher. “We’re not!” But they nearly all also lament the loss of authority. Mbraki leans on his metallic counter, dripping red mutton behind him. “The French are too scared to come and shop in Saint-Denis since the attacks. There’s fear. There’s less order — less police, more druggies, more dealers and more thieves. It’s getting worse. I tell you — ten years ago it was not this bad.”
How does the French state explain all this? I take the butcher’s accusation to the prefect. Grey-haired Philippe Galli is Saint-Denis’s most powerful official and the president’s envoy to the department of Seine-Saint-Denis. His throaty, gravelly voice is accustomed to power.
“Those same people who say there is a lack of authority,” snaps the 60-year-old prefect, “are the same ones who refuse the police access when they try and enter. Those from the Maghreb, by origin, permit themselves to behave in ways that would be unthinkable where they came from.”
He tells me that the secret services are currently monitoring 700 people at risk of radicalisation in Saint-Denis, and the police are too frightened to enter alone most areas under his control. So what, on the outskirts of Paris, has gone so wrong?
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