Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China, August 2035

Karim Bensaïd owns a lot in this immigrant neighborhood. From this hookah bar to a chain of rapidly expanding French taco joints across the region, his success is a stark contrast to the day he arrived here—fresh out of military discharge with nothing but the clothes on his back and the 10,000€ bonus he received for completing his service. He leans over, lighting the coals on the hookah with practiced ease. He apologizes for being late in French before switching back to Mandarin in his phone call. He smiles as he looks at my amused stare.

“Were none of you called up?” I ask.

“A lot of boys were, a lot,” he replies, exhaling a plume of smoke. “I’d say half just went along with it. They reported for service, got shipped off to Germany after training, and that was that. That’s what happened to my brother. Haven’t seen him since. He moved to Algeria after his discharge. Now he spends his days studying the Quran. A lot of boys never came back from Germany.” He pauses, his gaze distant. “We thought we were smart. We burned our draft notices when they arrived in the mail. The police couldn’t do a thing about it. Even in peacetime, they couldn’t control the suburbs. We had ‘fours’—drug dealers posted at the bottom of every apartment block. Kids on every street corner and some rooftops, keeping watch for cops or rival gangs. We had weapons, but we never used them against the cops. Those were reserved for the kneecaps of anyone dumb enough to try stealing our drug trade spots.” He smirks, a hint of pride in his voice. “We were all over Snapchat, showing off—burning our draft notices, hurling rocks and whatever else we could find at the few cops and military police brave enough to come looking for deserters in our block.”

“How was the mood?” I ask.

“A lot of people had already left for Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Algeria, or deeper into Africa—where their parents came from. About half, I’d say. They still aren’t allowed back in France. Luckily, for the poorest who couldn’t afford to move or get transit papers, they stayed. Besides, you didn’t want to be stopped at a highway roadblock or a port with a warrant for desertion or failing to report for military service. So a lot of folks just stayed put.” He takes a long drag from the hookah, the smoke curling around him.

“The rationing was tough, but there was enough food to go around. Most people used the rationing cards of family members who had already left the country. No one starved, and thanks to EDF—the state-owned nuclear power company—we didn’t have power outages like other countries. No, things were really alright for a while. Especially that first summer.” His voice softens, almost nostalgic. “Sure, there was the occasional news of someone dying, worrying about the people fighting or the ones who had fled. But that first summer was okay. Block parties, the little meat we had thrown on barbecues, everyone hanging out outside. It felt... normal, you know? But the government caught on.”

“We knew something was up when the cops disappeared. They’d usually roll by in marked or unmarked cars, staring at you from a distance just to remind everyone they were still around. And then, suddenly, nothing. For days. I remember that one afternoon—funny to think about it now. They never did raids in the afternoon. If they had to arrest someone, they came at 6 a.m., when anyone who might cause trouble was still asleep or just crawling into bed. I was sitting there, listening to some kid ramble on about combat footage his brother had sent him, when I heard the first whistles. Then came the shouts. ‘Police! Police!’

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Everyone jumped up. The kids did what they’d been taught—pushing big garbage bins into the middle of the road to block the way. But it didn’t stop the VABs. Those armored vehicles plowed straight through the barricades like they were nothing. Guys hanging out of the open doors started firing tear gas and flashbangs. Chaos.”

“We barely had time to react. A few tried to put up some token resistance, but the cops fired rubber bullets at them. That’s when I realized who we were dealing with. Sure, there were cops and soldiers—some driving the VABs and Griffons. But it was the plainclothes guys who really scared us. They wore jeans paired with combat gear that probably cost as much as our parents’ cars. And they moved in it—sprinting like it was nothing.

I turned around just in time to see one of them charging straight at me. He hurled an insult, then drove his knee into my thigh. The guy was 90 kilos of pure muscle, so, yeah, I collapsed on the spot. I was handcuffed in less than twenty seconds. My friend next to me wasn’t so lucky. I guess he gave one of those mercenaries too much trouble, because two of them were on him, battering him with their telescopic batons. They broke three of his fingers and a rib. It was like they didn’t care what condition he was in when he got to the front lines.

The neighborhood was gone. They stormed every apartment block, every stairway, every apartment, dragging people out. Forty of us ended up in the central square, sitting with plastic handcuffs digging into our wrists, our mothers screaming from the windows at the mercenaries. Those guys just stood there, rifles pointed at their heads, as if a fifty-year-old Senegalese or Algerian woman was about to hurl a fridge at them.

They didn’t let up with the tear gas either. If anything, they doubled down. They even fired a few canisters into the apartment windows. We were coughing our lungs out for half an hour before they threw us into autobuses and drove us to a collection center. It felt like the entire city was there—beaten, bruised, and licking their wounds. Guys we used to hate over drugs or football rivalries were sitting right next to us. One guy started mouthing off to a cop, and they didn’t hesitate. The cop just fired his pepper spray canister straight into him—and everyone around him. After that, everyone got the message: shut up, unless you wanted your side of the room crying and vomiting.”

“A local MP walked into the room, flanked on both sides by security agents. She looked like a deer caught in headlights—like she couldn’t believe what was happening either. None of us could. The ‘Black Week,’ when the president had greenlit this operation, caught everyone off guard. It felt like something out of our grandparents’ time. Thirty dead, 100,000 arrested across France—from Picardy to Saint-Denis.”

He took off his sunglasses and hung them on his football jersey. “They fucked us so hard we caught on fast. The MP told us we’d be brought one by one to a computer to see which training unit we’d been assigned to. She pleaded with us, for our sake and our parents’, to cooperate and do as we were told. Then a police chief took over. He made it clear: if we deserted, he and his colleagues would break down our parents’ doors and toss flashbangs inside every night until we came back.” He takes a long drag from his hookah.

“That’s the part they never mentioned in the victory speeches. The part the Labour and right-wing parties—who, for some reason, are in bed together—conveniently leave out of the history books. There’s a reason a lot of us didn’t come back.”