Some of the Afghan refugees are camping in front of the skyscrapers in Bobigny.
Image: Michael von Aulock
Immigrants without a permanent residence have hardly found a place in Paris for a long time. But Asrar Rahimi and his neighbors wander through the banlieue belt with their tents. Unfortunately, they are not the only ones.
Asrar Rahimi doesn’t have much plans today. It’s just before ten o’clock when he gets out of his tent, the sun has long been high in the sky. The park gardener with the noisy brush cutter didn’t bother him that much, he says, nor did the subway, which has been rattling past every few minutes since early morning. “I slept well,” says Rahimi, grins and folds his tent, which he then hides on the fence between the rail and the meadow.
For a few weeks now, the twenty-six-year-old Afghan has been spending his nights in the Parc de la Bergère in Bobigny. In the commune in the north-eastern Parisian banlieue and in the shade of dense pine trees, his tent stands largely unnoticed by the eyes of the townspeople. A police patrol car crossing the paved park roads keeps their distance. On this Wednesday morning, only a handful of joggers and a gang of garbage men pass through the meadow where around fifty Afghan men camped the night before.
