Kaouther Adimi

A Bookshop in Algiers

Marion

Do mints have an expiration date, or are they good forever, like books?

The Second World War has just finished. We know that we will soon have to take arms, and that France cannot stay in Algeria.

Those Arabs. Those towelheads. Those rats. Those kebabs. Those turds. Those lice. Beat them. Slaughter them. Rub them out. Send them flying. Use batons. Use our police weapons. Use bricks. Kill as many as possible. Kill them by the dozen. Slaughter these people who have no right to be here in Paris, by the Seine, among our monuments, our trees, our women. Slaughter them. Beat them.

Throw them in the river. See the Algerian bodies sinking into the muddy water. Far away now, the brown bodies. Make them dis-appear. Quickly. Brutal charges. Arab-hunting in Paris. Paris!

Manned by Papon's police, Paris kills. Savage. Chases in the streets of Paris. Don't think twice: throw them over, into the Seine. Broken bodies. Beaten with rifle butts and batons. Bodies hung in the Bois de Vincennes. Seine full of corpses. Hate set free. Noise. Chaos.

Baton blows raining on bodies lying flat, on bloodied skulls, on unarmed. And the silence of the Parisians. Another charge. People on the ground. Blood everywhere. Ambulance sirens. More blows, and bodies in the Seine. A pogrom in 1961. Purify France of its Arabs. Disinfect the avenues. Slaughter the assassins. Repression.

Tragic. Starting in the morning, Paris kills. The police, the riot squad, and the gendarmes are reinforced by the Auxiliary Police Force: brigades made up of Harkis, who fought with the French in Algeria. Zero tolerance. The arrests began even before the demon-stration. Insults, blows, harassment. Made to swallow whole ciga-rettes. Water mixed with bleach. Brutal roundups. Blood on the Arab face. Broken legs. We hit, we unleash the dogs. We line the brownskins up against the walls. We pack them into police vans. We grab them in the street by their curly hair. We hunt the type. We throw stones. We drown them. For a whole month after, bodies will be pulled from the water. The killing will go on for days. Corpses in the Seine. Hands tied behind their backs. Strangled with their own belts. Bodies bound and fung into the water. When the families in Algeria are informed, they will not understand what has happened.

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