The views of a group of French Jews who are now living in London
I remember the tap on my shoulder. As I turned around, my heart sank and my legs suddenly felt weak. There were three people facing me, and another twenty in the background. “Give us 10 Francs!” the person right in front of me said. I didn’t even manage to mutter that I didn’t have anything when a couple of punches found their way to my nose. A shot of adrenaline, blood and tunnel vision followed but as I crossed the road to escape the scrum I managed to get a glance of my four schoolmates, all against the wall, surrounded by the pack. As I had a wider view of the scene, I also saw that from the corner of this block, more people were coming, running towards us to get some “action”. Horror was inevitable. Only by a sheer stroke of luck did a school parent happen to pass by, swing the doors of her car open, and manage to get all five of us in the back seat.
It was 1997 in a suburb north of Paris: I was 17 years old and it was the last time I wore my kippa in public.
We moved from Paris to Sarcelles when I was eight. This city was famous for its massive Jewish population, and for its violent cités where the police didn’t go.
I was mugged the first time I went outside to play and my football and baseball cap were stolen. No words were exchanged, and I didn’t really understand what had happened. This kind of experience came to be a regular occurrence in our lives.
The school was a mere 30-minute walk from my house, and my friends and I tried as hard as we could to never walk it alone. We walked fast, our eyes constantly scanning the horizon for any movements. We knew that running into another group would lead to words or worse. This is hard to understand, but crossing a group of youths and everyone going about their business just never happened. The threat of being attacked and mugged was constant: on the train; on the bus; in the street and in the hallway of the buildings where we lived.
Sometimes at the end of school they were gangs outside, with pit bulls and Rottweilers, just waiting for us. Obviously they didn’t show any respect for our teachers, our parents or the police so we never felt quite safe, even inside the school.
It wasn’t about Israel back in those days: just that the Jewish kids were outnumbered and perceived as rich so we were ideal targets.
Growing up in these banlieues in the 90s wasn’t fun at all, and any ideas of romance I had left were suffocated a long time ago.
The recent terror attacks to hit the French capital were no surprise to us: we saw it coming 20 years ago. When you grow up seeing the Tricolour burn with a background of anti-white French rap music that promises to “rape Marianne”, to “loot France” or to kill “the pigs”, you know there will come a time when setting fire to thousands of cars and hundreds of public buildings is not going to be enough.
Is Paris still the City of Light? It is without a doubt a beautiful city. Is it still the romantic Paris of Zola, Moulin, Dumas and Malraux? Based on my experience and that of my peers, definitely not.
Jeremy Bokobza is a Frenchman and software engineer who lives in north London. He is also the founder of volto.io.
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