I have to say, I’d taken a liking to all these young people. They were very different types to the immature, sociopathic trash I was used to.

Afid, in particular, the nephew of the producer from the Rif, was serious, respectful and conscientious. Another fact worth noting: he always spoke proper Arabic to his wholesalers — in this instance, his childhood mates — even though they didn’t always understand everything he said (business line).

His mother was living in France. She was separated from her husband, an Algerian who had returned to the bled to marry a much younger woman (halal line).

Based on information I had gleaned from the thread of conversations, I had worked out that the reason Afid was speaking in Arabic, even though his native tongue was French, was to demonstrate, in his own way, that the country in which he had been raised had let him down. His dream had been to set up a workshop for luxury vehicles on the Côte d’Azur. He had done everything society had asked of him: he hadn’t loitered about the place, he’d kept himself on the straight and narrow, had clearly applied himself at school where he’d received his Advanced Vocational Training certificate with distinction in auto bodywork design and manufacture. Then, on finishing his studies he had come face to face with the Great French Lie. The educational meritocracy — opium of the people in a country where nobody is being hired anymore, least of all an Arab — would not be providing him with the means to finance his dreams. Instead of sitting there on the steps of his housing estate block whinging with his mates like something out of Madame Bovary, or providing Daesh with cannon fodder, he went off to live in his parents’ homeland with his certificate in his pocket and a plan to get back out as fast as he could.

And since his uncle Mohamed was producing bricks of cannabis resin, he had found himself putting his expertise in automotive bodywork to use, making undetectable false bottoms for the trucks carrying over the family drugs (the uncle’s business line, also tapped).

As for the famous garage he was dreaming of, he would open it in Dubai when he had put enough money aside.

I liked the Benabdelaziz family. They had plenty of get-up-and-go and a healthy love of life — something I myself was utterly lacking at the time, mainly due to my mother’s hospitalization. It was a period during which I did nothing but cry, sleep and work to pay for her aged care facility. Putting on headphones and listening to them and their stories was one way of getting out of my miserable apartment, or the even-more-miserable offices of the drug squad. I was able to live their life vicariously, and it did me good.