or fear that the swelling population of Algharb would overflow and drown them in a catastrophic crisis.
Whilst the Muslims of Algharb felt little in common with the Christian Federation, its younger population, in a continuous conflict of identity, looked towards Europe with envy and bitterness, and at the same time both rejecting and regretting their African origins.
In a world without great monolithic power blocks, France, as England, no longer enjoyed the power and independence they had once known. Demographically and politically they had become weak, not very different in economic terms and influence to their neighbours and certain more distant countries. Within the Federation cacophony often reigned and the voice of France progressively weakened.
There were the ever-present problems of politics, national security, health and education, which had to be resolved on a regular basis as they had been in the past. However, the future of the country was hardly glorious when the major concern of the Premier Magistrat’s government being Algharb, a burning wound on the side of France that he had resolved to cure in one way or another.
Internationally, the survival of the strongest was more than ever the rule. As Nova Rossiya’s revenues from oil and gas declined it was submerged by the disaster of public health and environmental problems, absorbed by the crushing weight of military costs needed to shore up its eastern frontier with the Chinese Peoples Republic that coveted the vast empty spaces and potential mineral wealth of Siberia for its burgeoning population.
The unexpected fragmentation of China had contributed to the diffusion of missiles and arms to the belligerent nations of the Middle East, forcing the Federation to develop its own anti-missile defence system to ensure its own security, though the theatre of potential armed conflict had shifted to East Asia and the Indian sub-continent.
Though the balance of economic and military power was held by the USA, the European Federation's influence was considerable. The other powers, China, India, and to a lesser degree Turkey and Nova Rossiya, evolved in an ever changing configuration alliances.
In the background were numerous countries of the third world, desperately poor and often governed by unpredictable men, including the Western Caliphate. In spite of the apparent confidence of its religious rulers they were on constant guard against the threat of ambitious military men, who never ceased to test the resolve of the Caliphate’s leaders, always probing for a weak spot, planning a surprise coup, or a suicide attack mounted by bitter army officers or by terrorist movements, in revenge for the enforced political and economic isolation of the Caliphate.
The globalisation of the world economy had profited the developed countries, those that disposed of advanced technologies and the capacity to invest in new research, requiring ever more capital, controlling communication, finance and production. Not only in the domain of high added technologies, but also for food crops, animal husbandry and pisciculture.
The poor countries were neglected like some kind of dropouts, left the lowest tasks in industrial production, manufacturing components at slave labour prices for the trans-nationals. These countries formed a vast second class and poorly organised market, a market where products and services were bartered. These markets were not unlike those seen on the perimeters of large cities where the poor lived a hand to mouth existence.
The only important sources of revenues in the Caliphate were its raw materials: oil, gas and phosphates. Oil and gas were no longer the black gold of the twentieth century, but they provided a flow of revenue in euros and dollars, which enabled it to buy adequate quantities of cereals for its vast population, undernourished as a result of the recurrent droughts that regularly threatened their crops. Revenues ceaselessly plundered by the military offering itself the toys claimed to be necessary for the security of the Caliphate.
Tourism had become almost non-existent with the exception of certain cultural visits; the Imams refused, in the name of Islam, to bend their rules accepting tourists and the polluting pleasures of alcohol, music and scanty beachwear.
In Europe’s north led by Germany, right wing governments ruled, encouraging the return of their Turkish population to their renascent and powerful Turkish homeland, whereas other undesirables such as, Afghans and other Islamic populations, as well as gypsies, where expedited to their countries of origin.
France had been joined by French speaking Wallonia and Flanders formed a union with the Netherlands. It was logical outcome after almost two centuries of incongruous cohabitation by the two populations of Belgium. With the entry of the Eastern European states and the Baltic countries into the Federation, Germany had become the centre of gravity of Europe while the countries that constituted the poor periphery to the east and southeast were abandoned to their misery caught between the Federation and a renascent Turkey.
Politically Italy had foundered. It had transformed itself into two autonomous regions, the north turned towards the heart of the Federation, and the south leading a loose confederation of small Mediterranean regions dominated by Naples including Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Malta that lived under the shadow of the Caliphate. Naples, with the blessing of Brussels, controlled Muslim Albania, treating it as a protectorate, to pre-empt any interference from the Caliphate.
The Federation was more concerned by its own needs and comforts and preferred to contain the problem of Islam rather than resolve it. The Europeans of the twenty first century did not want to die for any abstract concept such as religion, whether it be Christianity or any other belief, for them life was much more tangible on earth where life expectancy was eighty five years with a guaranteed pension, in spite of the grim forecasts to the contrary made at the beginning of the century.
Wealth had never ceased to grow with the development of countries such as the new China states, where demand for manufactured goods produced by highly sophisticated and reliable technologies continued to progress.
Cheap manpower no longer played a significant role in the production of manufactured goods as labour costs rose in Asia; even textiles could be manufactured cheaper in Europe, meeting the fast changing needs of its fashion industry for which those countries, once competitive, could no longer respond to the instant whims of market demand.
Germany dominated Europe, both economically and politically, having resolved its problems of surplus labour by separating itself from its gaste arbeiters either expulsing them to the south or imposing its poor on those who were even poorer.
Thirty percent of France’s population was over sixty in 2025, at the same time the total population of the Caliphate exceeded four hundred million, equal to that of the whole European Federation. The pendulum of history had swung again and the weight of population was now on the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
At the end of the previous century four hundred thousand new arrivals and infiltrators penetrated the EU each year. Family members: husbands, wives, children, the parents of those already established. At that moment nine million naturalised Neos lived in France and with infiltrators they totalled over eleven million.
Islam had become a terrifying spectre for Europe. However, in spite of the poverty and misery of its populations, the Caliphate had rediscovered a certain tranquillity in its isolation and self imposed exclusion, a simple life without great aspirations, except those offered by Allah.
The frontiers of Algharb were amongst the most guarded in the world, it was a sanitary cordon that evoked that of the German occupation of Northern France during the war of 1939-45. Little uncensored news flowed from one side to the other, prompting rumours the stimulated fear, anxiety, hope and determination.
Hamad
Ennis decided to explore the city and taking advantage of one of the bicycles put at the disposition of the hotel’s guest he set off in the direction of boulevard de Notre Dame, where to his right he was stirred by the Basilica with its strange minarets. He pedalled slowly up the slope of the boulevard trying to fade into the background, his baseball cap well pulled down. The progress of the cy
clists under the hot sun of Medina Hurriya was slow, they were not used to an unnecessary excess of effort. It was a little after one and there were few people in the streets.
He looked at the broken pavements and the incomplete repair works. The streets were scattered with uncollected litter. Rubbish was everywhere, plastic bags, old papers and bottles of all kinds. He turned right into rue du Dragon then rue du Paradis and towards avenue du Prado and the better class areas.
The privileged classes and Arabs from the Gulf States and other regions of the Middle East inhabited the wealthy districts. The streets were lined with fine buildings and luxury boutiques. There were expensive cars with chauffeurs waiting for their owners who perused the boutiques or lunched in the expensive restaurants. Household servants collected the purchases or made the more mundane shopping rounds, children were looked after by nannies in the nearby gardens. Wealthy women were dressed in the latest Paris fashions as the poor and old looked on dressed in their faded djellabas, begging for a few coins.
In the nearby streets the trees and shrubs in the gardens seemed to be dying slowly from lack of water and the omnipresent pollution. In the side streets he noted a good number of