Hidden Countries

On his first morning as a dropout, Alyoune wakes up knowing that today will be a good day. Why shouldn’t it? It’s 1986, hip-hop is riding the wave of its golden age and Aly’s muscles thrum with kinetic energy. Tomorrow, he will make amends with his parents, look for a job and handle his premature conscription into adulthood but today is meant for grander things. He sneaks outside, collects his cousin Bouba, and together they set out for Les Halles, known in Parisian b-boying circles simply as the place; a location shrouded in urban myth. Aly and Bouba kept to the skateboard parks of their block for a year before they finally gathered the courage to go, and though it’s now a regular thing, Aly still feels a buzz of excitement as they get on the RER. They hop off half an hour later at Châtelet – Les Halles, a bustling intersection of RER trains, métro lines and people, the station street dancers flock to from their respective parts of the banlieue like pilgrims converging in Mecca. Aly takes a turn in the direction of Les Halles, tossing Bouba a grin over his shoulder. He can already feel the ground vibrating from the boomboxes, subtle like a shiver running down a spine, and glimpse the white blaze of the place. Technically the subterranean entrance to a shopping center, this cavernous forum at Les Halles is where b-boying icons are born. It’s packed as usual, glistening tiles populated by boomboxes, MCs and dancers, mostly b-boys but a few b-girls too. With Bouba in tow, Aly dives into the crowd to greet familiar faces with handshakes and fist bumps. There’s Salim whose clever footwork is out of this world, Kalil who does turtles and windmills like his life depends on it, Aicha the loaded gun who fires off one power move after the next, Femi who is quick and smooth as a snake. They are all like Aly and Bouba, kids from Saint-Denis, Montreuil and Vitry-sur-Seine, raised by Maghrebian and West African parents, who latched on to Black American hip-hop culture and transformed it into something of their own. Aly joins a circle where Mehdi is battling against a newcomer. The atmosphere is especially good today, air crackling with confidence and electric ambition, spirits skyrocketing when Mehdi stops toying with his opponent and shows him what a dance battle as Les Halles really looks like.

Rocking back and forth on his heels, cajoling with the others in the circle, one shoulder jostling against Bouba’s and the other against Aicha’s, Aly feels larger than life. Les Halles is not just the entrance of a shopping center, it’s more than a slippery white floor and a couple of boomboxes, it’s an entire country hidden in the underground of Paris. Here, Aly is more at home than anywhere else. He doesn’t belong to the country his parents left behind but neither does he belong to Paris, the cruel city that devours working-class immigrants for breakfast and then spits them out on her banlieue, that reminds them at every turn they may be needed but not wanted. Paris can go fuck itself for all he cares. Alyoune belongs to the sovereign nation of Les Halles where mainstream society is powerless and the only rules that apply are their own. The newcomer admits defeat and Mehdi stays in the circle, waiting for another challenger. Aly loosens his shoulders, puts some swagger into his walk and steps forward with a smirk.