It’s true that the police decide which translator will be called to translate the telephone intercepts or interviews of those they are holding in custody. To get started as a translator, all you have to do is swear solemnly and sincerely to assist in the exercise of justice, which is one reason why you see all sorts in this job. You should understand that a lot of French interpreters of North African origin only know their parents’ dialect, whereas there are seventeen different Arabic dialects that are as removed from each other as French is from German. It’s impossible to know all of them if you haven’t studied Arabic seriously at university level. So let’s say we’re talking about the intercepts of a Syrian or a Libyan, and they’ve been translated by, say, a Moroccan model, or a cop’s Tunisian wife, or a police superintendent’s Algerian personal trainer . . . How should I say this? I’m not judging, but I’d like to see them.

I think I owe my success partly to my availability, but most of all to my name. Patience Portefeux. Especially now that every Arab is seen as a potential terrorist, since the attacks. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians? Who will keep tabs on the Arab translators? Uh . . . nobody! All you can do is pray that they remain immune to the verbal abuse which they and their children are forced to suffer . . . A paranoid, racist society forced to trust its foreigners. It’s a farce!

They were always on the phone with offers of work, and I have to say, in almost twenty-five years, I never turned down the smallest job, even if I was sick. Then, thanks to the respect I’d earned by my reliability, they started offering only the kind of work I wanted, leaving the rest to less experienced translators.

Little by little, I was able to steer clear of interpreting in court or in interrogations, and concentrate instead on translating phone-taps for the drug and organized crime squads. I no longer had to consort with people who only wanted to tell me all about their trials and tribulations, them in their handcuffs, and me the first and only person in the assembly line of repression to speak their language. Unlike left-wing paternalistic bourgeois types, I’ve never felt the need to hang out with nice Arabs in order to justify my existence. There are all sorts of Arabs, just like there are all sorts the world over. Polite, well-mannered types and disgusting pigs. Progressive ones and stone-age hicks from the village. Lonely, lost souls and entire villages of young people who’ve only been sent to France to commit crimes and bring the money back home. Like I say, all sorts.