Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Anhui and Guangxi. At home their families’ had traditionally depended on their tiny subsistence farms. The mingong was an uncontrollable floating mass, a threat to the government and the stability of China.
The second and fatal disaster came with the collapse of China’s main export market. The war over Taiwan and the deep recession in the USA resulted in the collapse of the dollar, transforming China’s wealth into worthless paper and the disappearance of export markets overnight. The country’s economy stalled and the Middle Kingdom fell into a new period of disorder as its people’s dynasty suffered the same fate as those before them.
Infection
Jean Berthelot arrived in Paris from Libreville, the capital of Gabon in West Africa, on a regular Air France flight. The young Parisian was an education advisor working on an aid programme for a department of the French Ministry of Education dedicated to development and cooperation in French speaking Africa.
He was attached to the Ministry of Health in Libreville making frequent visits to outlying areas to report on an aid program providing training and assistance to village clinics financed by the French government. Amongst the many visits carried out on his last tour of inspection was a clinic situated in a village near to the frontier between Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville some days before his departure to Paris,
The clinic was nothing exceptional in equatorial Africa, it was poorly equipped, supervised by a trainee district doctor based in a larger town thirty kilometres away, the staff was consisted of a couple of willing but inexperienced nurses who had little more than basic training. They were short of all but the most rudimentary medical supplies and equipment, for the most basic needs. Their principal task was caring for expectant mothers and young children, as well as treating malaria and malnutrition.
During his overnight stay in the district guesthouse he met with Labib Jabbarin, a medical sales representative, a Lebanese, born in Beirut, who spoke French and had studied pharmacy at University of Jerusalem. The Lebanese had been long established as businessmen in Africa and the French often employed them because of their knowledge and experience, but also because they were amongst the few who accepted the dangers of modern Africa. Labib just arrived in Gabon from the nearby Congo.
Labib was returning to the Lebanon, first with a stop over in Paris, where he was scheduled to visit the pharmaceutical company he represented, but first a few days rest and shopping in Paris. When the two young men discovered that they would be travelling on the same Air France flight to Paris they agreed to meet at the airport the following week. Meanwhile Labib continued his visit to the regional hospitals whilst Berthelot returned to Libreville to complete his report and prepare his departure.
A week later as planned they met together at the airport in high spirits, pleased to be leaving Gabon. They checked in and on boarding the aircraft found to their satisfaction the plane half empty, occupying two rows of seats across the aisle from each other, where after dinner they settled down to a nights sleep.
The plane arrived in Paris on schedule at six the next morning, the night had been bumpy and Labib complained that he had slept poorly, he was feeling tired and felt a cold coming on with a headache that he attributed to the ventilation.
At the airport they bid each other goodbye, Berthelot wishing Labib a pleasant stop over in Paris and a Happy Christmas, forgetting for a moment that he was a Muslim. He then made his way to the domestic terminal where he was booked on a flight to Bordeaux.
Arrival in Paris in the cold early morning of Christmas Eve could have been described as anything but an exceptional event, other than for Berthelot whose fiancée would be waiting for him in Bordeaux. The young men were amongst the hundreds of thousands of Christmas travellers arriving or departing from Paris for the year-end holidays.
The airport health and immigration authorities had established strict controls for international arrivals, especially for those travellers arriving from Africa. Controlling visas was easy, however, it was much more problematic to control every single individual for disease, the visible only proof apart from the vaccination certificates was their apparent good health.
Berthelot had no problem, he held a French passport and a vaccination certificate issued by the Institute Pasteur in Paris. Labib as a medical sales representative working for a major French pharmaceutical company was equally well set up with the necessary visas and vaccination certificates.
The head office of the pharmaceutical company Labib represented was at Issy-les-Moulinaux that lay at the end of one of Parisian metro lines. It was just a thirty minute ride from the small but modern hotel where was staying, the rooms were well equipped with murals, a minibar and a limited room service. He had used the hotel on a couple of his previous stays in Paris, it was situated on rue Boetie, just off the Champs Elysée, near to the shops and lights of Paris.
He took the Air France bus to Port Maillot and then a taxi to the hotel arriving at eight thirty, too early to check-in. It was very cold and a fine snow had started to fall. He decided to sit it out in the warmth of a nearby café watching office workers gulp down a morning coffee. He took a window seat where he could watch the passers hurry by to their business and read the Figaro quietly as he drank a hot chocolate and savoured a warm croissant. He was pleased to be back in civilisation though his head throbbed as he felt the cold building up. It was ten before his room was made-up and he could fall onto the comfortable bed.
A virulent strain of haemorrhagic fever had broken out south of the town of Franceville in the border region of Gabon and the Congo-Brazzaville. A number of villagers living on both sides of the border had been infected. By the time the medical authorities in Libreville were informed of the nature of the disease Berthelot and Labib were already on the way to President Bongo International Airport. They were totally ignorant of their contact with the disease and the many villagers amongst the 227 persons who would be identified as having been in contact with the deadly virus.
By Christmas day more than two-dozen people were already dead and a sanitary cordon had been thrown around the village with little information leaking out, the authorities fearing the news would worsen Africa plight, which was going through one of the direst periods in its tragic history. They need not have bothered, such news had little interest in Europe where the public was saturated by the news of disasters and where Christians were concentrating on the festivities in the warmth and comfort of their homes.
Labib woke up that same evening, his mouth was parched and he was running a fever, he took a bottle of mineral water from the minibar and swallowed a couple of Aspirins. He then went back to bed realising that he would not see the Christmas lights on the Champs Elysée that evening.
The next morning, Christmas Day, a Saturday, he had not improved and asked the maid, Charifa, a Neo, not to make-up his room, only changing the towels. He lay in bed all day only calling room service to replenish the water in the bar.
Paris was quiet the following day, just those in jobs such as Charifa’s worked. She lived in the Zone and was classified as an Arab resident in France, though her grandparents had arrived in Paris from Constantine in Algeria at the beginning of the century. Her work pass allowed her to enter into Paris each day from the Zone during her working hours and the time necessary for transport to and from her place of work.
Charifa tapped on the door of Labib’s room, there was no reply, she tapped again and then slipped the plastic pass into the key slot and the door opened. The day before Labib had complained of fever, weakness, muscle pain, headache, and a sore throat, now he lay on his bed in a pool of vomit and excrement mixed with blood. It was Sunday and the Neo weekend manager, who wanted no trouble on a quiet Sunday, decide to call a doctor, not alerting the emergency medical services, it was two hours before the doctor arrived, by then Charifa had returned home carrying the infection home into the Zone.
The Gallos
When we examine the social structure of France prior to the rebellion it can be s
een that little had basically changed since a century. The Gallo population was divided into a broad spectrum of classes with their sub-divisions. The governing class was composed of an elite political and business class based on a meritocracy system. Meritocracy it was, most of the ruling class had been through the elite higher education system composed of grandes écoles, such as the Ecole Polytechnique, Central, Ena and others. The weak link in the meritocracy system was that the majority of those who succeeded the severe entrance exams, who had above average intellectual abilities, were the sons and daughters of parents who were often the products of the same institutions or had already succeeded in reaching the class of the politically or economically privileged.
There were few barriers in passing from one class to another, a trade unionist could enter the political system and eventually become a government minister, then if his children showed above average learning abilities, they would enter the higher education system with its advantages.
Hand in hand with the politicians were the prosperous industrialists and businessmen who wielded wealth and provided employment for the rest of the population. They belonged to the same