Pariah

Fiction

The day after the massacre, Amir, who resides in a middle-class neighborhood in Bordeux woke up feeling rather strange. In his apartment where two other Berber immigrant families live, the children, whose squeals disrupt his sleep, didn't wake him. Not even his next door neighbor, whose Unia and Khansa Batma songs add to the noise wasn't played that morning. A coincidence, perhaps, since he used to bang the wall next to his bed to tell the teen to put down his speakers' volume.  

Leaving his bedroom to reach the doorway, he walked past shards of broken glass from the window. He was too tired the night before that he didn't hear it crash when some no-good doers thought it was fun to hurl some pebbles into his room's direction. After taking a leak, he dragged on to the front door to pick the newspaper he reads before breakfast. 

It was never delivered. 

So was the daily milk ration he use for his porridge. 

This has never happened. 

He was about to walk back when he spotted a neighbor, a surly guy holding a copy of the latest issue of Le Figaro. He didn't mind the front page picture of the hatchback used by the terrorists, what he found bothersome was his stare.   

"Nique ta mere." The Frenchman said, almost inaudibly.

"Tu peux répéter s'il te plait?" The neighbor responded by spitting on the pavement while still looking at him. Being used to this treatment, he walks back to his apartment only to step on a Koran smeared with human feces.

"Humanité." He sighed, before picking the holy book to wipe off the fecal matter, and put it back at the mosque, which later that day, would be torched to cinders.

Several French mosques were attacked following the killing of 12 people at the office of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, according to reports.

Around 8pm local time on Wednesday, shots were fired in the direction of a Muslim prayer hall in Port-la-Nouvelle in southern France. Meanwhile Ouest-France reports that several percussion grenades were thrown into the courtyard of a mosque in Le Mans, west of Paris. 

Mosques Attacked in France Following Charlie Hebdo AttackTime