Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faïza Guène

France; and by boat because it was cheaper than the plane. It's also true that he worked with earth and stone because, back then, he was in public buildings and works. But the clairvoyant, she kind of forgot to mention how it was going to end. People like that only say what you want to hear.
    Take Shérif. Shérif, this guy from the neighborhood, he turned up from Tunisia about six years ago. Everyone calls him Shérif because he's got a real cowboy look going on. Plus, he always wears a red cap with a star printed on it. He looks like he came straight out of a Western, with his black hair and mustache. So this guy went to see a clairvoyant who told him that soon he'd be very rich. It's been years since she told him that. Maybe she should have been more specific about what she meant by "soon." So basically, ever since then, Shérif puts money on a trifecta for the horses every day, and he'd bet his life on it making him rich. He goes to the bar in the square to get the results. And since he loses every time, he gets jittery. Shérif, he's a Mediterranean guy, right ... So when he doesn't win, which is every time, he crumples his cap, shouts all these curses in Arabic, and storms off. It's been like that a long time.
    Sometimes I tell myself life's kind of lucky all the same. We think we don't have much, but we don't think about those people who have even less ... Yeah, yeah, they do exist. Like that boy at my primary school who always got beaten up. Small blond kid with glasses, had a season ticket for the front row in
class, always got the top grades, used to give the teacher pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and ate pork in the school canteen. Your ideal victim.

    Mom's started her new training. She likes it a lot, from what she tells me. She's even made friends with two other women: a Moroccan from Tangier and a Norman grandmother Mom calls "Jéquiline." I guess Jacqueline's the teacher. It reminds me that my mom's social, unlike me. When I was little and Mom took me to the sandbox, none of the other kids wanted to play with me. I called it the "French kids' sandbox," because it was right in the middle of a development with houses instead of towers and there were mostly full-blooded native French families living there. Once, they were all making a circle and no one would hold my hand because it was the day after Eid, the festival of the sheep, and Mom had put some henna on the palm of my right hand. Those morons thought I was dirty.
    They didn't understand the first thing about social diversity and cultural melting pots. Then again, it wasn't really their fault. There's still such a well-drawn
line between the Paradise Estate where I live and the Rousseau housing development. Massive wire fencing that stinks of rust it's so old and a stone wall that runs the whole length of the divide. Worse than the Maginot Line or the Berlin Wall. On the project side, the divider is covered in tags, drawings and concert posters and flyers for different eastern-themed evenings, graffiti praising Saddam Hussein or Che Guevara, patriotic signs, VIVA TUNISIA, SENEGAL REPRESENT, even rap lyrics with a philosophical slant. But me, what I like best on the wall is an old drawing that's been there for a really long time, long before the rise of rap or the start of the war in Iraq. It's an angel in handcuffs with a red cross over its mouth.

In my building, there's a girl being held prisoner on the tenth floor. Her name is Samra and she's nineteen. Her brother follows her everywhere. He stops her from going out and when she gets back from school a bit later than normal, he grabs her by the hair, then the dad finishes the job. Once, I even heard Samra screaming because they'd locked her in the apartment. In their family, the men are kings. They do serious close surveillance on Samra, and her mom can't say anything, can't do anything. So it's truly bad luck to be a girl.
    Except a few days ago, some neighbors told Mom
Samra escaped. For the last three