M ehdi Remadnia was number one. It had made him fatalistic. A social worker, Mohammed, recalled meeting him after he got out. His mother had died when he was nine. Was he a decent guy, deep down? He had blood on his hands. Such as anything Arabic. And yet Marseille, and all its struggles, is a litmus test for the future of France. I see citizens of Marseille, I see citizens of France. The reality, however, is that many of the people here consider themselves to be Marseillais first β and only.
Front National posters are plastered outside the police station on the edge of this estate, and riot police cordon it off many mornings. But nothing changes. Her eyes are liquid but blazing; there are bruises down her arms.
Samira has a seven-year-daughter, and lives with her on benefits in accommodation reserved for those in precarious circumstances. Her now presumably ex- boyfriend drives a Mercedes, carries a Glock. Poverty and marginalisation cause these kinds of pressures to build up. To enter the cells, you remove a metal stopper from the door handle and tap it on the narrow window; the plastic is pitted with hundreds of tiny holes.
Yet, despite plenty of evidence that the stick is not the answer to social exclusion, it has featured prominently down the centuries in how the French authorities have handled their second city. Louis XIV built forts on the port in the s after the city rebelled, and reputedly kept the guns pointing inland to keep the locals quiet. By the postwar years, with the industrial port in decline, a complex intertwining of political, administrative and criminal links had come to dominate public affairs under longtime mayor Gaston Defferre.
The renovations have stopped and started since β and no one seems sure when they will be completed. Samia Ghali is one of the exceptions to this apathy. The mayor of the 15 th and 16 th arrondissements, and a national senator with the Parti Socialiste, knows whereof she speaks. Her parents were unable or unwilling to look after her. She watched her friends slip into drug addiction.
