Just north of the French capital’s main train station, Gare du Nord, and a few streets from Montmartre, home of its artists, is the less-loved but much-needed neighbourhood of Barbès, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, long a refuge for immigrants.
Maimouna hurries past the maze of boxes and cans, weaving her way through the bustling market, ignoring the tall vegetable seller with an Upper Egyptian dialect shouting: “Here you go, Set al-Kul.” Most vegetable sellers are Egyptian immigrants, she says, slipping between figures, as voices in a medley of languages and accents rise and fade amidst the flow of shoppers in this dense crowd.
The air is thick with the mingling scents of fish, meat, fried eggs, and brik (a malsouka pastry, often deep-fried) stuffed with minced meat and onions. They come here from all over Paris, from the suburban enclaves of Aubervilliers, La Plaine Saint-Denis, and Courneuve. Today they carry umbrellas, clad in heavy winter clothing in the rain, to buy and engage in conversation.
Life with movement
Maimouna stops at the modest stall of an African woman in vivid hues, who keeps an eye out for the police. The colours of her dress blend seamlessly with the vibrant display of vegetables and fruits, most imported from Spain or Portugal, others smuggled from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.
She scoops a handful of henna powder into a crumpled newspaper. Maimouna hands over the last of the coins in her handbag. The golden light casts faint shadows over the faded Tati sign, the last vestige of what was once the city’s largest budget department store before its decline and eventual closure in 2021.
“I feel completely at home here,” says Maimouna, lighting a cigarette. “This noise makes life feel irresistible. I can’t imagine living anywhere else, nor can I picture my life without the ceaseless movement of this neighbourhood.” She leans back against a wall scrawled with the words ‘Ici Annaba’ (Here is Annaba), a city in Algeria, and watches the women gathered along the wall of Barbès-Rochechouart metro station.
Vendors line the pavement, calling out their wares at bargain prices—plastic combs, canned goods, eyeliner, used cassette tapes, second-hand shoes, phones and watches (almost certainly stolen), and seasonal fruits. "Some are just trying to afford a cheap motel room for the night, instead of sleeping on the street," says Maimouna.
Not far from these women, makeshift stalls overflow with vegetables, fruits, spices, meats, fish from the Atlantic, pickles, fiery harissa, plastic containers, and kitchenware imported from Pakistan and India. "In this market, I can buy everything—everything—even illusions and joy," she says with a boisterous laugh. "I never have to leave. Here, I can reclaim fragments of my childhood."
She chats playfully with a vendor in her Algerian dialect. He hands her a cornes de gazelle ('gazelle horns', a crescent-shaped almond pastry) and she savours its sweetness, her cigarette burning in the other hand. "I never give it up," she says with a smile, revealing teeth yellowed by the habit. "My cigarette is my only friend—along with my cat, Nedjma." Switching between Arabic and French, she says she named her cat after Nedjma, the renowned novel by Algerian writer Kateb Yacine.
Ahmed, an Egyptian labourer who arrived in France in 2005 aged 18, is one of many Egyptian stallholders. Typically, they worked in construction before the pandemic, then pivoted to selling vegetables. "Here, I barely speak French," he says. "I never really mastered it because most of the shoppers are Arabs from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, and Syria. You even see the Palestinian flag here!"
Most customers are women or men who live alone, he says, former labourers who never married or returned to their homeland. "Nowadays, Arab students also come to shop. Young people find the things they miss from home—shatta (hot sauce), spices, sweets, halal meat. But mostly, they come for the prices." It's far cheaper here than elsewhere in Paris.
Born in 1965, Maimouna lives in an apartment she inherited from her parents. Her father was born in Barbès but with family from Tlemcen, a city in northern Algeria. Her mother, Fatiha, was a carer for an elderly French couple. "We had a good life because of them, especially when my father wasn't earning much as a waiter," she says.
"They were like grandparents to me, treating me with so much love. When they passed away, I mourned them deeply—they had no one else but me. We even celebrated Christmas together, though it wasn't one of our holidays. My late mother, however, was a devout Muslim. She wore the hijab and never missed a single prayer."
The Barbès of TamTam
Maimouna's grandfather came to France during the war, "drafted like so many others from the French colonies at the time," she says. He settled in Barbès, like most of the Algerians conscripted into the French army to fight Nazi Germany.
It was during the war that Barbès experienced its first major waves of immigration, becoming a magnet, particularly for Algerians, whose presence helped shape the area's identity, in part through its many restaurants, cafés, and cabarets. "My father frequented one of the most famous cabarets here—TamTam—where legendary Algerian singer Warda first took the stage."
Its owner, Mohamed Fattouki—Warda's father—originally wanted to name the cabaret Grand Maghreb, but was denied a license under that name, so he created an acronym from the first Latin letters of Tunisie, Algérie, and Maroc—thus, TAM was born.
Since the 1940s, Barbès has had a thriving nightlife scene, with cabarets and nightclubs attracting live bands, musicians, and dancers. Among the most famous venues, according to Saadi Bouanani, 82, were Djazair, Le Bagdad, and Les Nuits du Liban, which came alive on Friday and Saturday nights, drawing crowds from the working-class Maghrébin community, not only from Barbès but also from neighbouring areas like Belleville and Saint-Denis.
