centre of the town and had the convenience of having a railway siding and its own shipping dock.
The children were half asleep; the faces of parents were both resigned and filled with anxiety before the unknown that awaited them. Four weeks in the Queyras had not prepared them for the forced voyage to a distant destination, full of dangers and uncertainties.
They carried in their hands their suitcases and rucksacks full of the necessities for their sea voyage to Dakar. They had few souvenirs of their previous life, simply their memories and a few photos.
Some kilometres from the port the inhabitants of Sete arose that morning occupying themselves with their daily chores. However certain had worked in the preparation of and transformation of the site into a reception and transfer centre for the transmigrants. They understood that the centre would handle a large number of persons but knew little else as to the origin or destination of the voyagers.
The port had been transformed into a high security military zone and access was forbidden to all except of those workers who held passes. Unwelcome or curious visitors were quickly moved on by the heavily armed NASE Guards.
In the bars and cafés of the town men spoke in low voices of the strange comings and goings of the military and the people of the Ethnic Affairs Department. Sete had always been a working town where people had always earned their honest working class living from the port activities or its fishing industry. They looked suspiciously at Paris and had a deep feeling of fear and unease, knowing that not far from their homes the regime of le Martel was about to perpetrate a dark crime, the mass deportation of impoverished French who for various reasons did not match the Nation’s model for its citizens.
The deportees were not totally unlike those transported to the prison colonies of the nineteenth century, the difference being that they now included women and children and had committed no crime other than to be poor.
Operation Savannah was under way and there was nothing that could stop it. In the port the ships awaited their passengers among them were two aging trans-Mediterranean ferryboats chartered by the Ministry for the transmigrants. In addition there was a troop carrier and supply vessel for the RASE Guards and an escort frigate that would accompany the convoy to its destination, Ville d’Albignac, the administrative capital of La Nouvelle Côte.
An Ordinary Man
My parents moved in when I was a kid, I was about eight, at that time it was a paradise for us. At that time my father was a storekeeper in a furniture factory somewhere near Roissy. Every morning between the 20th arrondissement and his work the traffic was a nightmare. Our apartment was a real dump; the building was run down with the toilet on the landing, nothing worked.
“When the council gave us the new apartment it was a dream, there were gardens with grass and trees, lifts, hot and cold water, bathroom and toilet. I remember my mother cried with joy the day we moved in.
“Almost all the people were French, real French, Parisians, ordinary working class people, honest. At first it was good then, little by little, the others moved in. At first we didn’t notice them because as I told you there were a few West Indians and Arabs who had been in France for ages.
“We voted mostly Communist, sometimes Socialist; we were in the unions, the CGT or the CDFT. There was a continuous battle for better wage and conditions. There was no question of race as such.
“My father died in an accident when I was seventeen and I had to leave school to work,” he said laughing, “I wasn’t brilliant and I went to work for Carrefour, the hypermarket as a store keeper, like father like son!”
“My mother took my father’s death badly. I suppose that’s normal, with my sister we had to take care of her.
“About that time the number of Settlers and Neos started to really go up in out district and the living conditions started to seriously go down.
“I still don’t know what motivated the politicians to let that happen, it was an invasion, I think they couldn’t care less, the socialos and cocos, the rotten mayors and town halls, they must have needed supporters, they encouraged the blacks and Arabs.
“Gradually it was not the wages that counted the most in work, I mean the discussions, it was respect and equality, suddenly I had to respect people and ideas that I had never even thought about, I mean before they were just workmates, now I owed them respect, I owed their religion that I knew absolutely nothing about respect, I had to be careful what I said. If I placed a wrong word I was a racist.
“When I came down the stairs by foot because the lift was out of order, I’d find my old car broken into or I be insulted by the young Beurs, excited and aggressive as usual, I went on holiday once to Tunisia - you know organised by the works committee – they’re like that in their own country, aggressive by nature.
“It’s like that on housing projects, cités, a continuous fight for survival against violence and vandalism. Old people are attacked in the lifts, when they die nobody cares, their bodies can rot for weeks in their flats. Gangs and drug dealers fight in the streets with knives and iron bars.
“Life is like that in the cities, it stinks, it bleeds, and it’s not worth living.”
He remained silent for a few moments then he continued.
“Then I voted for the Right that changed nothing. Politicians don’t give a dam about people like me, you remember Jospin and Hue, equality for the Neos and asylum seekers, they let them vote, as for us we were racists. Then I voted for the Front National, to start with I kept it to myself or I’d get a smack in the mouth for my trouble. Imagine, the Communists, who left a trail of blood and disaster across half of the world they accused the le Pen and then le Martel of being devils, they were guilty of what, looking after the interests of the French? Not privileging the wogs?
“What did we get from all of that? I ask you? We lost a good part of France, more than we lost to the Germans before. Imagine if the France of 1958 could see us now! Provence inhabited by who? Asterix? The Gauls? The grand children of the 39-45 Resistance? The veterans of Algeria? My arse! No, the sons of fucking goats and camels! The fucking wogs, who for a thousand years have done nothing but cultivate dates and flies.
“For me and the likes of me, we are for le Martel, sweeping this cancer that has eaten into us into the sea once and for all!”
Algharb
Viewers should be reminded that Algharb was theoretically part of the Federation, since it was in fact an autonomous region of France. The ambiguous secession proclaimed by Algharb was ignored by the Federation on the other hand it was taken as a declaration of independence by the Caliphate and most other Islamic countries. Since then its status hung in limbo since Hassan bin Ibrani could not risk provoking the wrath of le Martel and loosing the autonomy of Algharb.
Algharb resembled the cosmopolitan Tangiers between the two World Wars, its government closed its eyes to the freebooters of both the Christian and Muslim worlds on condition their objectives were non-political. Hassan bin Brani had an open door policy towards asylum seekers willingly accepting Jews from the Greater Levant and the political refugees from the Caliphate on the sole proviso of their non-participation in religious-political activities.
Medina Hurriya was nevertheless a hive for every kind of intrigue and traffic imaginable, its politicians were corrupt as were its police and security services, reputed for their brutality. The agents of the Nation were everywhere as were those of bin Ibrani. They were not alone; there was also the Caliphate and those of almost every other country in the Federation.
Algharb had been transformed into a doubtful offshore financial centre and tax free zone. For Paris and Brussels it was also a centre arms and drug trafficking, smuggling, forgery and every other kind of criminal activity.
The most fervent desire of le Martel was to repossess the lost province and rid the Nation and Europe of the sore on its side. He realised that as time passed the task would become more and more difficult, it was vital that he act soon, the problem was the evacuation of the population of
Algharb which had now reached fifteen million and was increasing as bin Ibrani raced to defeat le Martel by his open door policy.
Huge shantytowns that were a reminder of the townships that South Africa had known sprung up around the main population centres.
The population change involved the movement of three and a half million people. Three million in the direction of the Autonomous Region and one and a half million towards the Metropole.
The three million who remained in the Autonomous Region were composed of the Insurgents and their supporters, for the large part Neos, the others were mostly old people and those who lived on the land and in small towns or villages who refused to abandon their homes and way of life.
The new arrivals were allocated housing in the empty houses and apartments abandoned by those who had chosen to flee. Their conditions were cramped and the overflow was settled in camps that took on the look of Gaza, built by the Provisional government with the assistance of the Federation and international organisations for refugees.
The Autonomous Region covered a little over twenty five thousand square kilometres with a population of six million compared to Switzerland with its forty one thousand square kilometres with a population of six and a half million.
The transfer took place over