I will always remember it. That was the worst period of my life. It was in October 2004, three years after my knee injury that screwed up my dreams. I was 16 and in 9^th grade.

 

It was a Thursday evening, around 8pm. As usual, I was doing my homework alone in the stairs of my building to avoid my brothers and sister and my mother. Usually I sneaked back into my “home” only around 10pm. And nobody asked me where I was.

I was struggling with a stupid French assignment when I heard someone slamming the door of the building very loudly. I got pissed because at that time of the day, usually nobody was leaving or entering the building. Scared of being caught I hastily threw my book and my paper in my backpack and got up quietly. I didn't want people to see me and tell my family that I was spending my evening in the stairs. As if they would care.  

Suddenly I heard a girl crying and a guy shushing her. I stopped moving. Then the girl said:

“He’s dead, Bilal! He’s dead!”

I recognized the voice. It was Atouma, my best friend Aladji’s eldest sister. The guy, her brother, spoke:

“I know, I know… But please calm down! We have to stay strong…”

“Have you seen how Aladji’s body looked like?!...”

My bag fell on the floor with a dull sound. I didn’t move, horrified. Al was dead? Impossible, I immediately thought: “We were together at school that day.“

Warned by the noise Atouma and her brother came up and looked at me panicked. Atouma put her hand in front of her mouth and Bilal approached me, shaking:

“Bak, listen, please don’t tell anyone. We want to do it ourselves!”

I knew I should have presented my condolences but my throat was dry. So dry that it hurt me badly. My heart was racing at 100 miles an hour and my legs felt too weak to support my weight. Atouma tried to take me in her arms but I pushed her away. I just had the strength to ask what happened. They looked at each other and Atouma cried again. I didn’t know why but at that moment I just wanted to shake her and scream at her to stop crying. Bilal answered me with difficulties:

“Scooter accident. A car didn’t see them coming and hit them, not violently but they weren’t wearing helmets. They died before the ambulance arrived”.

“They? Who was with Aladji?”

I got scared. What if it was my other best Bro Ibrahima? In that case, I just had to kill myself. But it wasn’t Ibra. It was this dumbass of Souleman. I never got why Al befriended him. Seriously, he was a stupid and reckless dealer. I couldn’t help myself and asked, knowing the answer:

“Who was driving the scooter?”

“Souleman”

I clenched my teeth and my fists. Instead of going back to my apartment, I began to go down the stairs. I heard Atouma’s voice behind me begging me not to tell anything to anyone. I didn’t answer and just asked, my back facing them:

“Can I see him at the hospital?”

“I am sorry”, answered Bilal with a hoarse voice, “only family is allowed to be near his…. Body”

I turned to them in a very sudden move, making them jump.

“But I’m like his brother! You know that!”

Bilal looked powerless. I didn’t wait for the empty and inevitable consolation speech and ran down the stairs. I went out the building and ran through the neighborhood, not knowing where I was heading. I was just seeing the high and horrible buildings scrolling around me. More than ever, I felt like moving in a big grey and oppressive jail for the “forgotten of the Republic”.   

When my lungs were about to explode, I stopped running and sat on the first bench I saw, breathing like an asthmatic. There was nobody in the street, which was a very good thing. I needed to be alone to digest the info.

My first thought was that I had fallen asleep on the stairs and I was having the worst nightmare my sick brain could imagine. I pinched myself very hard to wake up. I felt the pain but the situation didn’t change. I did it again. And again. And Again. I don’t know, maybe 100 times. But nothing happened.

I took my cell phone and tried to call Aladji. Five times and always straight to voicemail.

I stayed there looking at my phone screen, hoping that it was going to ring. But nothing. After one hour, I got up and walked again, wandering in the neighborhood, only looking at my phone. After a long walk, I finally entered in a opened building and sat on the stairs. I fall asleep, flayed and feeling hopeless.

 

An old Arabic man woke me up the next morning. He looked at me, surprised and asked:

“Who are you? What are you doing here at 6am? Where are your parents?”

I didn’t know what to answer; I had the feeling of being completely disconnected from reality. On top of that, I was hungry and thirsty.  

“You don’t talk? You don’t understand French?”

“I… I… I think my best friend is… dead…” was the only thing I could say.

“What?”

“I don’t know… Maybe I dreamt, sir”

He sat with difficulty next to me and asked calmly:

“Why do you believe your friend is dead?”

“Because his sister told me so. Yesterday. I think that’s what she said.”

“Listen, kid, I have to go to work. But maybe I can bring you back to your friend’s sister and she can clear that up with you. Maybe she was mad at him and she simply said he’s dead to her.”

I wanted to believe him. But there was this little voice inside me that had been repeating that Aladji wasn’t from this world anymore.

I accepted the offer and followed the man to his car. We had to scrape the ice off the windows of his very old Golf before we could leave. The guy didn’t ask me again about my parents and we stayed quiet during the entire journey. He was certainly used to kids from the hood whose parents were never home.

When we arrived in front of my building, I saw a lot of people at the entrance. The old man looked at me anxiously. I didn’t wanna leave the car but I had to let him go to work. I got out of the vehicle and then I heard the old man do the same. He followed me quietly while we were approaching my building. Then I saw Ibra crying silently. And reality hit me in the guts. I wanted to puke and felt my head spinning. Even if I managed to hold all this bile inside me, I couldn’t move. Then the old man passed his arm around my shoulder and said:

“I am really sorry for you, kiddo. Really.”

The man left after giving me a pat on my back. I so wanted him to stay. To support me and to tell me that everything is gonna be OK. But that wasn’t his job.

After a long moment, I found the strength to join Ibra. We didn’t say a thing to each other. I just leaned against the wall next to him and crossed my arms. Teeth clenched, angry against the entire world. 

 

The rest of the day was blurry. Nobody from the hood went to school. I stayed at Ibra’s place with another friend. We played video games and waited for information from Aladji’s family about the funeral.

I went back home only in the evening, around 9pm, when Ibra’s mother came back.

No one in my apartment asked me where I had been for the past 24 hours. And nobody asked me how I felt.

A few days later, while I was again doing my homework on the stairs, I briefly overheard a conversation between Atouma and her mother saying that the car that hit the scooter was a police vehicle. I guessed they didn’t tell anyone to avoid any dramatic consequences in the hood, as the circumstances of the accident were not really clear. I just asked myself, wether we – the kids from the hood – were really only seen as stupid and violent people with no future – as our guiding counselor loved to tell us in our high school. I knew I wasn’t, Ibra and Al weren’t either.

That evening I came back to the apartment forgetting for the first time to put the garbage bag in the building dustbin. My mother just screamed at me that if I wasn’t a better son, I’ll end up like Aladji.

 

The following day, I ran away from home, never saw my family again and got my shit together.

And exactly a year after, Clichy-Sous-Bois began to burn.