Lingering taste of Moorish past
The day I finished writing a novel about the us-and-them of our terrorist times, I went for a walk over to the other side of Montmartre, the back of the Butte, where the 18th arrondissement descends into an immigrant neighbourhood and wondery tourists are replaced by African and Maghrebi faces. I mingled among the market bustle, the piles of plantain and the bottles of orange palm oil. Traders hawked handbags and bunches of mint and there were flurries of activity when the police appeared. France is still under a state of emergency. As I sat in an Algerian cafe, I heard the news of the attacks in Brussels. Initial reports said 13 dead, but I knew the number was sure to rise.