My name is Jamel Zarour.
My parents came from Belkour, from Algers.
My father was a furniture upholsterer. I never got to know him that much and I saw him very little. When the sun went up, he would go down to the shop, under the house, working till late in the night. Then he would come back, eat, drink three glasses of pastis and would hit the sack.
He used to tell me that Allah never gave a dime for the people. He believed in France.
My mother was thin and slimy like a river fish, all but bones. She liked everything American: the movies, the television, the music, the magazines.
At school, I had two friends, French from Algers. And then there was one.
When I was in high-school, my father closed the shop and we left the house. Nobody was interested in decorating their furniture anymore and my father was drinking pastis all day long. He tripped once and was killed and they picked him with a shovel. My mother cried her eyes out, but I didn’t care.
I dropped out of school because my mother didn’t work, she was reduced to crying and watching all this American stuff and also because I didn’t like to study and having them telling me that I’m a stupid, those bastards.
I worked in many jobs and everybody paid me jack shit or zilch. Because I was a kid, because I didn’t know the ropes, because I was Algerian and if I didn’t like it, I should go back to my country.
My country was France.
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We were also kicked out from the other house and we moved to the house of a man who was with my mother. One day I saw him groping my sister and I smashed his face, I pulverized his chin so that he will never be able to eat anything else but soup with a drinking straw.
I got busted and thrust into the juvie, because they said I was a boy. I was fifteen.
I battered many guys there, too and that big bloke who fucked me because he had others pinioning me, I bumped into him once and he was alone and I broke four joints of him. I made mince meat out of his knees and elbows.
They let me out when I was eighteen and the cop waited outside for me. I will fuck your mother and your sister shithead, fuck up once and I’ll bang you up for good, you fucking dog, that’s what he told me.
I stayed with the friend I had from school. We didn’t work and when we wanted to, we couldn’t get one or they didn’t like our mug. We jumped tourists and pilfered them. I screw an American who had hair like Monroe who my mother used to see.
I was nicked hustling fix and was banged up, with the grown-ups this time. In there, they flattened my face and tore my ass up, but I didn’t just let it happen, I gave them back their teeth at their hand.
The Nazis hated my mug and the Bear, the leader of the pack, cornered me along with five more. He sucked my eye and spat it out. It was hanging from a string and I saw my face for a sec before I go down.
When I woke up, I had one eye left. But I didn’t give a fuck about it.
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All I want to do is to fuck everybody, put their face into the shit I was given to eat.
I see them hanging around with their fancy clothes, drinking coffees and laughing, kissing each other in their shiny cars and I think to myself: “you’ll get a piece of the shit I ate for so long”.
For my father who jumped out from the roof, for my mother who got laid with fucking assholes, for my sister who scored her dope on the streets, for Samir who was rubbed out by the cops, for me that was left one-eyed, half a life, bullshit, as if your god, the white one, the blue-eyed, with two eyes, is the devil, a torturer.
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They gave me a gun and started all over this bullshit again, not to be afraid, that’s what they told me.
I don’t give a fuck, I told them. I don’t give a fuck about the world, life, your fucking bullshit. I don’t fucking care.
The world fucked me, I will fuck them back.
I don’t feel sorry for anyone. Who did for me? I’ll fuck everything up. If you want me saying how great god is, I’ll do it. I don’t care. I don’t believe. I hate. That’s my faith.
I hate. Because this was my life.
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PS: Ten days later:
“In the, famous now, municipality of Molenbeek, just because a good proportion of the terrorists who were behind the Paris’ bloodshed in 13th of November lived there, the youth unemployment rate is up to 40%, whereas to the rest of the country is roughly 8%. The austerity measures enacted in Belgium since 2009, have multiplied phenomena of marginalization of the second generation’s immigrant youths who live in the specific district, cultivating a suitable environment for the spread of the extremists of the Islamic propaganda.”
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