(epilogue)

In the metro, there’s no longer any trace of the backdrop of poverty that habitually hindered the gestures of the passengers. Strangers talk to each other, and no longer just get up into each other’s faces. A gang is having a meeting on a street corner. Bigger gatherings on the boulevards, deep in serious discussions. Attacks flash from one city to another, from one day to the next. A new barracks has been pillaged and burnt to the ground. The inhabitants of a foreclosed-on house have stopped playing tug-of-war with the mayor’s office; they live there in his office now. With a flash of lucid discourse, a manager has just sent a chill down the spines of a handful of his colleagues in the middle of a meeting. Files with the personal addresses of all the cops and national guardsmen, and of the employees of the prison administration have just been leaked, and an unprecedented wave of people moving to different addresses has arisen. People bring their excess products in to an old village grocery store/bar and take out everything they need. People get together to discuss the general situation and the hardware they need for the machine workshop. The radio keeps the insurgents informed on the withdrawal of the government forces. A rocket just blew out the wall surrounding Clairvaux prison . It’s impossible to say whether it has been months or years since the “events” began... And the prime minister looks very alone, making his appeals for calm.

March 2007.