English Version - Generation M - #4 - 1997 - 2000

 This is a big part of my life, where my professional choices were made and the rest of my life was written, at least at the end of these three years I knew what I didn't want to do. It was also a time when I had to conjugate from the first to the third person and say we, willy-nilly. With the end of the second millennium, at the end of the twentieth century, the second and last phase of my student life began. 

This period of great intellectual fulfillment, of parties and encounters, I have taken the habit of praising it to my students. It was a unique period of life, after which came responsibilities, a couple and a family for some, and worries for many. In the meantime, for me as well as for my fellow students, there was room for carefree moments. 

As before, it is important for me to put my journey in the context of the time. All the more important as this context largely explains the situation which is ours today: technological hold, globalization, victory of the screens and thus of the image and world chaos.  If we had obviously not seen it then, in retrospect it seems obvious. Yesterday's world, the twentieth century, is gradually sinking before our innocent eyes. 

When I returned from the United States in September 1997, I began my third year at the University of Paris Dauphine, reputed to be among the best in economics and management. It was economics that interested me at the time. Management rhymes too much with business. I was naive. 

But even before resuming classes, a practical problem arose: the distance between my home and the university. I live more than an hour and a half away by transport, which is at best three hours round trip every day. This is simply impossible! I have to live in Paris. And since I can't afford it, the solution is a university room. My childhood friend Sylvestre is in the same situation. I took the initiative a few days before the start of the school year to go with him to the CROUS, which manages the student housing stock. 

As scholarship holders, we can claim but the deadlines are exceeded, and our spontaneous and late request is very hazardous. However, our speech is successful, and our good faces find favor with a lady who certainly sees in us a bit of her children or at least good guys. In one appointment we are placed! It will be Concordia residence at 41 rue Tournefort!

We are tenants of this university residence with its imposing facade and its big white stones in the heart of the Latin Quarter, near the Place de la Contrescarpe in the Mouffetard district, a stone's throw from the Pantheon and the Sorbonne, with its cafés, its bars, its nightlife.At night, we go and eat a salted crêpe, when it is not the university restaurant, because of the finances, and then wander in the streets, or in one of the bars of the district. We live like bohemians, the toilets and showers are  shared on the same floor. But aren't we in the heart of Paris?

Sylvestre or Sly: hair in the air, a hunk as one can be at twenty years old, in the full power of his seduction. Girls like him, and boys befriend him thinking that they will be able to take advantage of his fame with the second sex. After a quiet teenage years, he is now a confident and seductive young man. Quite honestly, some people should pay him a debt of gratitude for helping them to get out of their loneliness or to meet their soul mate. 

The first year, we both share the same room. It's basic: two single beds, a sink and an old lino floor. We have known each other for about ten years; without having ever been in the same high school, we went several times in summer camps, that creates bonds! On the same floor, we met Sylvain, a Congolese student, who after two years in Grenoble came to continue his studies of architecture in Paris. Much more serious and structured than us, he is almost alone in France, and he can't afford the luxury of playing around like us. But little by little, we form a trio within the residence in a kind of complementarity. The following year, the three of us were still on the same floor but in single rooms; Sylvain in the room next to Sylvestre, the mythical 401, and me opposite.  The success of our friendship? Different origins, and especially temperaments that will compose a small original music: Sylvester the flatterer, Sylvain serious and terribly good dancer, and me ? As a free electron but always caught by the core of the residence. The score will work remarkably well, then each one will go to play solo at the end of this three years adventure. 

During the school year 97-98, I work at the Novanox hotel where I am a night watchman. I will occupy the position for more than a year and a half. After Ladurée, it is my second job in hospitality. From seven in the evening to seven in the morning, I welcome new arrivals, help those who are leaving often early in the morning, set up breakfast and stand guard late into the night. Sometimes I fall asleep on the bench, customers knock on the front door, I jump up, I open my sleepy eyes.  The ineffable Mr. P, at the head of the family establishment, seems straight out of a period movie with his manners, his lisp, and his tweed jackets, before taking service with his piercing gaze he reminds me insistently of the instructions of the day. He trusts me by leaving me alone at the head of his establishment all night.  We are at the beginning of the internet, the connection is slow, 56k, and I wander through the web for hours. Or sometimes when I'm bored at night, I'll phone sex for naughty encounters or discussions. I'll leave a hefty bill, which Mr. P, magnanimously, after warning me, will wipe off. But on the whole it is seriously and without hitch that I fulfill my mission. 

Two or three times a week, sometimes right after my shift, I go to my full contact and  boxing club on the Ste Geneviève mountain, very close to the residence and a few meters from the Pantheon. It is from this time on that sport will take a place in my life that it should never leave. Weight training, but also swimming. I learn to swim alone or. First time in my life that I discover the club spirit. Although I have never practiced a collective sport, I like the idea of finding familiar faces during a training session or a few assaults. This will be the case later on, in a completely different dimension, with free fight or of course wrestling which I will talk about at length.  I go to the swimming pool, I am a poor swimmer, but by dint of obstinacy, I overcome my fear of water, and I take my ease in the aquatic environment, capable of doing several lengths. Boxing, weight training, swimming, I also try yoga for the first time without suspecting the role it will play later in my life. 

The Left parties are coming back in charge. In the spring, by chance of an unfortunate dissolution of the National Assembly wanted by President Chirac, the left, to the general surprise, returns to power after four years of purgatory. It is the third government of cohabitation, and it is led by the austere Lionel Jospin. For five years, he led France towards the Euro, the flexibility of companies, the obligatory corollary of the entry into globalization. The first three years coincided with a no less surprising recovery in economic growth, which masked what was at stake: France's entry into the global competition. But the country is emerging from the torpor of the early 1990s. Boosted by the new Internet economy, employment is picking up and the spectre of unemployment is disappearing. The economy, which had been shot up with youth jobs and the controversial 35-hour workweek, was regaining its dynamism. I can write that at this time the French are happy with the 1998 soccer world cup. The Zidane, Deschamps, Henry and all their teammates of the French team led by Aimé Jacquet, to whom let us do him justice few believed at the beginning of the summer of 98, will offer a last beautiful moment of a joyful France and of collective unity.

Yes, the summer of 1998 is indeed the high point of this joy of living at that time with its World Cup taking place in France, sixty years after its first organization in the Hexagon! On June 12, the French team played their first match against South Africa in a climate of general skepticism. I remember having with Sylvestre accompanied Grégory to Magali's house, and having watched this first match from afar. But as the competition progressed, and in view of the performances of Les Bleus, the country, beyond the football enthusiasts, began to believe in it. One month later, on July 12, in the brand new Stade de France, Les Bleus faced Brazil for the final.  That evening, I was in the 18th district, visiting friends. When after the 3-0 victory, I go out in the streets, it's impossible to find my way, impossible also to join the rest of the group on the Champs Elysées. Paris is full of people, a jubilant crowd, as in all France. Horns, fields, strangers kissing! It is beautiful and warm this summer evening, and France is the world champion! A popular fervor that I will never see again. France is on the roof of the world! 

1997-98, these are the years when the first mass-market cell phones appeared. Of course, they were not yet connected to the Internet. But they allowed people to call each other without having to use a landline or street phone, and to send text messages, all from a small grey-green screen. This is huge! No need to take calls on the landing of the residence in full view of everyone. In 2000, I would even have a startac for a few days that I would be very proud of. It's one of the first flip phones, with its minimalist and neat design; it looks like a secret agent's device which has everything to seduce me. I had hours of fun opening and closing it, enjoying the little pop. A few days after buying it, we go out to a club on the Canal St Martin, and when we leave the place, late at night, a thunderstorm breaks out followed by a downpour. Having wanted to play it cool, I kept my phone in my shirt pocket. It will take water and won't turn on anymore. As I said goodbye to my beautiful Startac, I became aware of the fascination and futility of this little object that would change everything in the years to come. 

At the same time, the Internet was exploding with home connection offers. Laptops were not yet the norm, nor was wifi. So you have to go on the web on your desktop computer at home or at work. As a good young person of my time, I surf late at night on adult websites. No need to wait for the first Saturday of the month on the encrypted channel! But also, I use it as a research object for my studies, even if I still have to go to the library most of the time, or buy a magazine or a book to have access to reliable information. 

It was during my last year at Dauphine in an information economics class that a professor awakened my attention with the following remark: from now on, the challenge for companies will not be so much to sell products, or for consumers to own them, but to capture their attention. Conquering attention is the goal of future economic wars in a world of information. We are in 1999, long before social networks, their like or influencers!  

As my master degree goes on, I'll have to decide what I'm going to do next. I have some tracks, vague I must admit. But this is after a visit in progress from a financial market analyst from the very honorable rating agency Standards and Poor's. Standards and Poor's, a name that makes me dream. Analyst in a rating agency, why not? It only lasted for a while. I was like that then, and I don't think I've changed much. I go for it head on, only thinking about it afterwards. But the taste of experience, my intuition were my real compass. 

If I didn't get my degree at Dauphine in cash, at least my passage opened my eyes to the moment that was opening up.  During the three years I studied, my main subjects were globalization, the new economy propelled by what was then called NTIC, New Information and Communication Technologies, in short the Internet. A happy globalization, we believe, started through the GATT agreements signed a few years earlier and which will lead to the WTO, the World Trade Organization and the massive liberalization of world trade. China was able to step into the breach, slowly but surely precipitating the decline of entire sectors of American and European industry. In barely two decades, the Middle Kingdom will become the workshop of the world.  In the previous chapter, I said how the Clinton years had propelled the American economy, and therefore the world economy, to the heights of growth. But we can better understand how twenty years later, having offered itself to China, having lost industrial jobs, how populists like Trump will come to power against a backdrop of resentment from an entire middle class that has not benefited, quite the contrary, from this globalization.

In spite of going out, partying, getting drunk, and working odd jobs, I am working on my courses and, above all, I am passionate about all these topics. And, I also became aware that intelligence, much more than an individual matter, was a collective project. Surrounded by brilliant students, often much more than me, I took pleasure in rubbing shoulders with them, in an atmosphere of common emulation. Perhaps also because, having chosen the economic stream and not the more practical management stream, we had more of the luxury or the obligation to question ourselves on the evolutions of the world.

Paris! Can I speak of a Parisian revival? It may be an exaggeration, but I love the Paris of that time, my Paris: from the left bank to the right bank. On foot or by bike, I crisscrossed the capital by day and night, preferably at night, sometimes for interlopers. Even if on two occasions, intoxicated and imprudent, the fall will miss to be fatal.  

It is by bicycle that we make with Sylvestre the discovery, at the time of a stroll and while passing through the street of Rennes. We stop, and our eyes wonder what are these signs with huge windows. H&M, Zara? Names which are unknown then, and which in some times are going to dress us, notably in shirt for our exits. Renewal also symbolized by a district like Bastille, and more widely the 11th district, new trendy district of the capital. 

I also like to approach strangers in the street, to talk to them because they intrigue me, with this audacity of another time. When I'm not playing solitaire, I like these Parisian evenings in apartments where we crash, or that we organize. The capital is ours. We will have some great successes, so much so that we will even have the idea for a time 

Music plays an important role. The French touch explodes with these illustrating Daft Punk, but also Stardust or Phoenix. It is of course the moment Lauryn Hill, who plays solo after the Fugees. Dr Dre is present in the playlists. Here are the most famous. In this field, I undergo for my biggest happiness the influences of my exits and especially of Sylvain informed music lover. I am initiated to the jazz, by some radio when I have the chance to isolate me, and discover new sounds which surprise me like Eric Truffaz.

If I have the memory of beautiful evenings, We, I also have in memory moments in head to head, where we try to grope, in spite of the collective glance sometimes heavy, to discover ourselves. At the risk of repeating myself, this is a time without smartphones, without widespread internet, where we can spend a moment together, communicate, without being interrupted. 

At the residence, a particular character, Imen, enters the scene. Everything starts in the summer of 98. With each one of us having our own room, but side by side, we constitute, Sylvain, Sylvain and I, powerful magnets in this residence which lacks animation. We are going to put some ! With her slow walk, after knocking and entering Sylvestre's room, she stays for long seconds without speaking, and then says things that always surprise us. This quirky side, will quickly make us like her. She will also know, for the happiness of many guys and theirs, how to introduce us to several of her girlfriends, with whom she will maintain a most ambiguous attitude. As if letting the wolf or the she-wolf into the sheepfold, she lamented the fact that she was losing control! She will have the most acerbic words, for those whom she will accuse of having betrayed her, which will make us laugh!

A whole bunch of expressions flourish: sabre teeth for this girl who, during a party, I don't know which of the band she kissed with her sharp jaw; there was also the Maïa effect for a return from vacation, tanned and in great shape. Names too, in no particular order: Caroline, Nadia, Céleste, Camille, Magali, Maïa, Leïla, Alisson, Nicolas, Fabien, Yasser... The loves, the friendships, the encounters last one evening or more. A bit like in a series, some will only last a few episodes, others will last for several seasons.  Arrivals, exits, doors that open and close; nocturnal visits, with no tomorrow, from one room to another. Life in the residence.

It is at the same time that the twins, Hicham and Adnane, make their appearance. They found Sylvestre in a year of licence at the Sorbonne with another group. We all come from the same town, Ivry sur Seine, but with somewhat different friendship backgrounds. At the time, I smoked and drank lightly, as a good Parisian student. In their eyes, I was guilty of having eaten my papers. Let's understand: I'm black, my friends are mostly white, my vocation is to write, rap music, especially French, leaves me indifferent... In short, a bounty: black on the outside, white inside! This leaves me indifferent, or even amused, all the more so considering our life paths afterwards. I put an end to my drunkenness, I went to live in Africa. They entered the mold, with a certain success in audiovisual production, as good Parisians. The life...

But behind the facade, they come almost daily for the same thing as those who visit us: to party, get drunk on juice and alcohol, and chase girls. With one difference: they have their license, which is rare in our group, and especially a car, which is almost inexistent then. Their unbreakable Peugeot 405 will be . When leaving parties or nightclubs, they have a rule, an ethical code I should say, which is to their credit, which is to accompany everyone to their door. It doesn't matter if they have to cross the whole of Paris to do so. Not drinking then, they are of a reliability that honors them and to which few have been grateful.

However, this factory of happiness is going to go wrong.

In the winter of '98-'99, I received a call from one of my aunts in the late afternoon. Dad had died. My father died alone in New York. At the other end of the line, I feel the blow, but without knowing it, the ground has just opened under my feet, and from now on nothing will be like before. But very quickly a practical problem arises: to get the body from the other side of the Atlantic. I offer myself. A few days later, shortly before the holidays, I fly to New York. I am received by Ashbell, a friend of my sister's whom he had taken in when she had gone to take care of our father during the long months and before she had to return because of her visa. Massive and tender, Ashbell lives in a large and beautiful apartment in Harlem, the Harlem I knew years earlier when my father lived there. At that time, it was summer, he was lively and full of projects. This time, I find myself alone in the cold New York winter to face a situation I was not prepared for.

The night I return from the morgue after completing the necessary formalities for the cremation, I am devastated.  Seeing me in this state, Ashell has the words and the attitude to get me back on my feet. He takes me in his arms, and slips in my ear: "What your father would have wanted is for you to be happy. My anger, my despair and especially my helplessness dissipate, wrapped in the warmth of this stranger. It was at that moment that I realized that sometimes in life, it is a matter of an encounter, sometimes with a stranger, who finds the words to help you.

 

I returned to Paris. Stunned, I try to regain my footing, and to make Ashbell's words my own. I try to get back on track. I grope my way back into the group and the parties. My friends in the residence, and the visitors, sometimes reproach me for my dark mood. How can I tell them that my heart is bleeding, how can I explain to my twenty year old friends, who only have the disappearance of one of their parents as a horizon for their next party, that your life is being turned upside down? It was a waste of time. And as for my studies, my efforts were not enough to validate my master's year. Not having completed my thesis, my mind was elsewhere, and I had to re-enroll in the same cycle. I will just choose to go to Economics of Innovation.  

It must be a summer evening in 1999, Sylvestre and Sylvain call me to join them at a party. I don't know our hosts, who live in a spacious apartment that opens onto a long balcony overlooking the rue Bobillot in the 13th arrondissement. There are a lot of people here tonight. Geoffroy, Guillaume, Pedro, three roommates and their gang with distant ramifications. They are already working, they are two years older than us, they are a bunch of soccer players, flirts and bon vivants, and always up for a party. They'll come to our parties, like the one I'll be giving on New Year's Eve 2000 at my mother's house. I remember being away with her friend at the time before the stroke of midnight when she returned, her house filled with people everywhere, in every corner. She will be all the happier for us, offering us a beautiful speech of which I remember her words addressed to the audience: keep the faith because everything starts again...

Each time we met again during the following years, most of the time in the parties I have already written how much I admired their ability to maintain their friendly ties despite the vicissitudes of life. And how, in the face of what was then my band, they were consistent in their friendships. Watching them, they fueled this question that will come up many times in my life, without me finding the answer: the coalition or the mission? Is it the coalition that makes the mission or the mission that makes the coalition? 

It is standing but wavering that I have approached the end of the twentieth century. But we are all turning the same page, even if we will not acknowledge the end of this era until some months later with September 11. In retrospect, this leaves a bitter taste. What did we do with these promises? Me, my comrades, us? However, I believed in the promises of this end of the century. First of all, freedom for all, promised with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Freedom is what I was most attached to. My own first, because to be perfectly honest, I did not participate in any collective fight. I naively thought that my individual behavior would be enough, and that it would eventually rub off on others. I tried to adopt an attitude in line with what I believed. Posturing, some might say. But it always seemed to me iniquitous to have to live otherwise than by one's choices, as long as one assumed them. So much for the theory. I tried to embody it in my individual choices. 

2000, another story begins. I am no longer a student, I will have to leave the residence, I will be the last to leave. One objective now: to find my way.