
From a Distant shore.
A week in Wales
Joan
7/2/20232 min read
I cannot let the rioting that it is currently happening in many of France's major cities pass without comment. It began on Tuesday night after a 17 year old boy of Algerian and Moroccan descent , Nahel Merzouk, was shot and killed by a policeman at point blank range, after a traffic stop. While the world looks on with horror and miscomprehension, youths have rioted throughout major French cities, and thousands have been arrested. Cars have been 'torched' supermarkets ransacked and there has been much chaos. France is reeling. Yesterday I read a report in British newspapers that British visitors to France were advised to reconsider their plans.
On Friday we flew out of France to spend a week with family in Wales. We left our peaceful forest behind , and a few hours later found ourselves in West Wales, where the cliffs are covered in dark purple heather and flowering blackberry, and seagulls surf the air over a churning sea. In spite of the grey skies, families crowd the beach, and children venture screaming into the chilly waves.The riots may as well be on the moon, as far as they have touched us. But of course that is the nub of the problem. As we live in our little cocooned world, the experience of a teenager of North African descent, in a cramped Paris suburb is as alien to us as the life of a polar bear in The Arctic.



