We leave Jules’s building, Free and me, and the sun is blinding. Brilliant-blue sky and light reflecting off every windshield and every window. We head toward the RER station.
“You look like you’re carrying a sack of cement over each shoulder,” Free says.
I feel like it too.
I don’t say this. I mean, what’s to say? I’m finding it hard to be here in Paris. I’m not even sure what it was that made me want to come, all those months ago, or what it is that’s made me stay. Some vague desire for freedom? To do any old thing—anything—regardless of what gets broken or who gets hurt? And I’m not sure why I agree to go to Villeneuve now. But I do. It feels like I have to.
Passing by the bakery, I catch a glimpse of myself in the window. There are dark rings under my eyes, and my skin is all saggy. Two cops stand on the sidewalk across the street, next to the pedestrian crosswalk. They wear regular duty uniforms and don’t look mean or particularly dangerous.
Funny.
Free says, “Down here, it’s like ain’t nothing going on.”
Down here, nothing is.
Up in Villeneuve, it’s even stranger. The town feels as quiet as a country village. There are scorched places here and there on sidewalks and in the streets, but if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d think nothing had happened out of the ordinary. There’s not a single blackened car carcass. The Esso gas station is roped off, but the post office is running like normal, people coming and going, all the windows replaced, the La Poste sign gone altogether.
“Feels fake, don’t it?” Free says. “For show.”
More CRS buses line the streets than usual, the cops inside behind tinted windows.
“But who are they trying to show what?” Free says. “Folks up here know what happens after dark.”
We get to city hall and the general assembly is already under way in the main conference room. All the Under-20s look to be present, most of the flag-team players too. No Aïda. The mayor is seated at the front, beside Marc Lebrun and the coaches. Our fullback, Adar Traoré, swearing and waving his arms, tears into them.
“Putain de merde! The cops are everywhere and worse than before!”
Some faces light up when they notice Free and me standing just inside the door. Jorge smiles and lifts his cap and turns his head; there’s a white bandage where he got struck. Free flashes a peace sign and moves off to the side, toward a couple of empty seats.
I don’t know what I expected to feel, coming up here, but honestly I don’t feel anything. Just blank. I follow Free, sit down beside him, as Adar starts in again.
“They beat my brother and his friend last night, sprayed tear gas in their faces and clubbed them! Just because they wouldn’t submit to a random frisking.”
“Yes, of course,” Monsieur Lebrun says. “I hear you.”
“And the mosque?” Salim Hassan, a backup linebacker, says. “Why shoot tear gas into a mosque during evening prayers?”
The mosque where Free and I hid out.
“Of course, I hear you,” Monsieur Lebrun says, acting as a kind of proxy for the mayor, who just sits there, his head bowed. “The police maintain that it was an accident.”
“An accident!”
“Come on!”
The mayor stands up then. “Perhaps it would be useful, and therapeutic even, if we held workshops for you as well as other youth, perhaps in the cités themselves, on how to properly express our anger…”
Jorge jumps out of his seat. “It’s not our job to pacify the violence! We didn’t cause it. The cops did!”
And a Cameroonian kid called Souffe yells, “It’s on you, Monsieur le Maire! On the interior minister and the other so-called leaders who have allowed this to happen.”
It goes on like that. Guy Martinez, who plays safety, says, “My papa’s car got torched. Because…well, why?” And Claude tries to speak but starts to cry. He just slumps in his seat, the hulking mass of him, his shoulders lurching. Monsieur Lebrun is standing, asking us to be respectful and to please sit down, but it’s everyone—Under-20s and flag players—screaming at the mayor, who is back in his seat, his face in his hands.
It’s Freeman who regains control of the room. He climbs up onto his chair, so quietly I don’t even see him do it. He stands there until all the others finally notice him too.
“Seriously?” he says. “This is the best we can do?”
The room is silent, all eyes on him. The mayor looks up at Free.
“We’re gathered here screaming and angry, and we should be angry for what happened,” he says. “But what are we doing?”
He looks over the room.
“Sidi,” he says, “he’s lying in a hospital bed, wrapped up like a mummy in bandages. Sidi, Moussa, Amadou—they worked so hard and would love nothing more than to play the Jets tomorrow. But they’re not here, and so something would be missing for the rest of us.”
I remember Free in Normandy, telling me what it was like trying to play after his dad was killed.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” he says. “We’ll boycott the final. We’ll take the loss, we’ll forfeit the game, in honor of our friends. Because they are more important than any game. But we’ll do it actively, in suits and ties, like for a funeral. In front of the Jets and the entire crowd. So that everyone will know that Moussa and Amadou haven’t died for nothing.”
Everybody latches on to the idea right away. Guys begin tossing out suggestions: we’ll make flyers with pictures of Moose and Sidi and Mobylette on them, spread them all over Paris; we’ll create a web page and hit all the teams; one guy suggests we contact the Skyrock FM blog. Everyone agrees there’s just enough time to get the word out.
My dad says you can read a person’s true character by what you see of them on the field. I think back to the first Jets game, the way it ended—Free lighting up that kid at the final whistle, screaming at him—and realize that what my dad said isn’t all true. What we do on the field isn’t really a stand-in for who we are. Sometimes we do what we do on the field because there’s a helmet covering up who we are as individuals, and we can only vent under cover of the group.
No, we are what we do when we’re exposed, when everyone can see. And that person, if he has the courage to, can change and grow every day. The Freeman I know is the guy from Normandy; from Moose’s apartment, with Monsieur Oussekine; from this morning at Jules’s place; and from here, just now.
My friend, Freeman Omonwole Behanzin.
I look over at him. He has sat back down and is looking at his feet, and he doesn’t look back at me.