cities, buses were given priority and many streets were dedicated solely for public transport.
The result was that the number of private cars actually started to decline because of restrictions in city centres, people used their own cars less, they used city cars that they could pick up and drop off at simple rental points and of course there were taxis.”
“Let’s see how our barbecue is doing.”
They joined him, their glasses in hand, whilst he inspected the ribs that were nicely grilling over the barbecue. He fanned the glowing embers with an old-fashioned hand bellows to give the coals a little more life.
“Well my son Philippe runs the business today, I just want to enjoy my life after more than thirty years of work, do the things I like.”
“The best thing about it all is that we don’t have to rely on imported oil and gas. Unfortunately the Arabs are still there in their millions at our door, even poorer because we don’t need their oil,” said Stone.
“And our friend le Martel is doing his best to keep them out.”
“The trouble is he reminds us of a person with a little moustache,” said Stone. “Our grandparents knew what that meant.”
“Our information sources tell us that he’s planning to go even further with his so called ‘Gallo-European’ ideas.”
“Like what?” asked Ennis.
“The idea is to recover Lost Provence.”
“That doesn’t match with his Gallo concept, I mean Provence is full of non-Gallos.”
“You’re dead right there old boy,” Stone replied getting excited. “You know what they’re going to do?”
“No.”
“Deport them, all ten million.”
“Where?”
“That’s a good question, but we’ve heard of several ideas. One is to Corsica and the second is to Africa.”
“But that’s impossible!”
“Why? Just stick them on boats and there you are! Good old fashioned ethnic cleansing.”
“That’s not the only thing they’re up to, the other is to clean out all the ghettos.”
“Ghettos?” asked Ennis.
“Yes, perhaps you don’t know about them, but the surround all big cities. It’s where they have parked all the residual non-Gallos. Those are the workers, an underclass who do all the dirty jobs.”
“As they’ve always done.”
“They don’t have any rights whatsoever. The live in what are called SRZs, that’s Special Residence Zones. They have passes to leave the zones to go to their work places and that’s all. In addition they are all tagged.”
“Tagged!”
“Yeah biological tags. Injected into them, almost impossible to get out without surgery.”
“But that’s inhuman!”
“So what! Everything is inhuman, even we have them, on a voluntary basis, progress you know, science and all that.”
“When you arrive in Paris your way out will be through the zone, you will be safe, there out passers set you up with all your papers and the rest.”
“What we would really like is that you let the outside world know what is happening here.”
“How?”
“When you get home put all of what you have seen in your newspaper and in your books. It’s the only way. This is France not some African banana republic.”
“Is it!” said Gabby. “Okay, let’s eat or this will be too cooked.”
They seated themselves at the table set out by the poolside under the branches of an old plane tree that towered above them. There was a slight breeze, a welcome relief from the heat of the afternoon. Gabby placed the first rib of beef on a plateau before them; he had cut it in thick slices at right angles towards the rib. They served themselves as Gabby poured them a Rioja, a red wine from the other side of the Pyrenees. The meat with delicious, tender, with a fine perfume of the charcoal grill and olive oil spiced with garlic.
“What kind of opposition exists in France today.”
“Very little from the so called Gallos, the others keep their mouths shut or it’s out for them or worse.”
“But the French approve?”
“Yes, the vast majority do, live has improved. They don’t depend on oil any more. Things are cheaper because of low energy costs. Jobs are evenly distributed for those who conform.”
“Who are the non-conformists?”
“At the bottom of the scale are the Clodos, Alcolos and Drogos. They took advantage of being Gallos for a certain time but now the government has declared war on them.
Then there are the Socialos, but they are not really serious, they dream of the past when they had to defend their jobs, real jobs. Today jobs are a system for the distribution of wealth; I know that was always the case, but now its different. Most jobs are invented and distributed on the basis of conformism. The real jobs belong to the establishment that supports le Martel’s system, a sort of nomenclatura.”
“But is there a real opposition?”
“Yes, people like us, an underground opposition. We are not resistance fighters, but we help those who are victims of the system. What are our political ideals, they’re not clear to be honest, we don’t want to go back to the chaos before le Martel, we don’t want the country to be invaded,” he said alluding to the Caliphate. “We don’t want to be dominated by Brussels.”
It seemed to Ennis that they were honest and sincere people but they were torn between a system that they refused and an unacceptable alternative.
He turned to Stone, “If you were in power what would you do?”
“First we’d introduce democracy, then with the wealth and knowledge we have, we’d try to improve the lot of those countries in difficulty.”
“What about the Caliphate.”
“We’d try to establish normal relations.”
“And Provence?”
“Well we wouldn’t open the doors at once, we’d help them to build a viable economy, we’d promote a secular society.”
“And if they didn’t want that.”
“They must accept that, we don’t want a volatile Islamic state in Provence.”
“You still call it Provence.”
“It is!”
Ennis had his answer, for them it was a confrontation between civilisations, with the enemy’s front established on the French shore of the Mediterranean.
A Chance Meeting
Ennis remembered le Martel paraphrasing the words spoken by General de Gaulle almost one hundred years before, ‘It’s good that there are yellow Frenchmen, black and brown Frenchmen ... on condition that they remain a small minority. Otherwise France will not be France.’
The Arabisation of the Maghrib was accelerated by Rashidun. It had already been commenced many years earlier by the FLN in Algeria with the suppression of the language of the ex-Colonial power. The French language had nothing to do with the Algerian people, its culture or traditions. Even the presence of a Francophone press was in contradiction with the Algerian constitution. An Algerian intellectual said ‘French is a language to be used when talking to dogs.’
It was Sunday morning and Ennis was up early. He told Guiglione that he wanted to take a walk to explore the district and to see if he could buy an English newspaper at the Bastille as he had done years earlier. Perhaps he could find a ‘Sunday Times’ or even his own ‘International Herald’.
He walked down the Faubourg Saint Antoine, the weather was fine and quiet, it was a pleasure to breathe the cool morning air under the leafy plane trees. He had thought of taking the Magnotram but finally preferred to walk. It was about two kilometres and would give him some exercise. He stopped before a Lebanese restaurant; cosmopolitan restaurants were as fashionable as ever in Paris, they were even run by foreigners who were part of the useful foreign quota who held privileged residence permits.
As he approached the quarter of Aligre the shops were opened with shoppers making their Sunday market. The atmosphere was more orderly then he remembered, there were still the piles of market refus
e, but it was all much more sedate, more bourgeois.
The district was much more up-market, the buildings though old were renovated and well maintained; there were art galleries and smart cafés.
He turned into rue Charonne and then into rue Lappe. It had not changed, modish though not really chic restaurants lined both sides of the narrow street. He stopped before what had been probably a restaurant, it had been transformed into a temporary gallery, there was a poster with the image of Che Guevara. He peered inside, there were one or two visitors, it was still early. The walls were in white plaster blocks covered with posters of Cuba and its heroes.
It was obscure; the theme was a tribute to the lost revolution. They were selling tee shirts and in the darkness flickered a slide show of the great moments in the history of the revolution, the dialogue was in English.
He flipped through the pages of the books on sale; the Che had never ceased to be popular theme with the intellectuals and art world. He was a folk hero like Marylyn Monroe, John Lennon and JFK.
“Mon ami!” He felt a hand on his shoulder and half turning was surprised to see an old friend, Frank Ellaert, a successful painter he had known some years earlier. “It’s better to die young than in shame and misery! How are you my old friend, what’s brought you to Gai Paris?”
“Frank, what a surprise!”
“Let’s go and take a coffee and croissant chez-moi, my gallery is just down the street.”
“So how’s life,” said Ennis inspecting his friend.
“Fine, fine, I thought it was you but I wasn’t sure, I followed you from rue Charonne, I can’t believe it.”
“What are you doing here, in France I