A palette where the colors don’t mix

NOT long ago Bibi Naceri wrote a popular movie about Paris in the year 2010. A wall divided the City of Lights from the banlieue, the suburbs with their housing projects teeming with poor Arab and African immigrants.

Naceri freely admits that he and his coauthor, Luc Besson, borrowed from the American action flick, “Escape From New York.” But in their story, “Banlieue 13,” the disenfranchised masses are not walled into the great city. Rather, they are walled out, into a lawless enclave away from the Parisian elite.

Over the last few weeks of civil unrest in France, life at times has felt as if it was becoming art. The government declared a state of emergency and imposed curfews nightly in areas where cars were torched by the hundreds. There was even talk of shutting down Paris proper in the evening to prevent any treachery.

Naceri never meant for the impenetrable walls in “Banlieue 13” to be pure fiction. The screenwriter who grew up in projects west of Paris believes there has long been a wall around the city -- one of police checkpoints on the roadways and in the subways -- designed to keep out the so-called scum, as one of France’s top ministers labeled the rioters. “The walls in my movie aren’t there,” says Naceri, “but there is so much violence and distrust that traps the innocent along with the criminals, it’s as if the walls really exist.”

Although a physical wall around Paris was torn down centuries ago, over the last decades, walls of distinctions dividing people by race, ethnicity, religion and neighborhood have become increasingly apparent. Successful French artists, writers and performers of African and Arab descent have been straddling them for years, and some like Naceri have even built their art on them. But first each found a way over the divide.

For Naceri, it was by studying theater in prison. For a mixed-race drummer who has traveled the world with rock stars, it was by learning Debussy and Ravel as a child. For an Egyptian writing duo, it was the patina of Parisian intellectualism.

The personal stories of these artists illustrate that with energy and creativity it is possible for minorities to infiltrate French culture. But this is not a country that often celebrates or supports its multi-ethnicity -- even though it is believed to have the largest percentage among Europe countries of citizens with roots in Arab, African and Muslim countries.

Particularly pop musicians and rappers, visual artists and filmmakers with these roots complain of being shunned by France’s Ministry of Culture. The ministry pours its resources into sponsoring the national library and museums and opera houses in Paris that belong to the French elite, according to Frederic Martel, an author and former cultural attache.

“In anything from dance to theater, if you are black or Arab, doing your own thing, nobody will give you money,” he says. “We want them only if they accept our classical music or avant-garde theater. They must be French on our terms.”

And even that is a bit of a fantasy: At the annual summer theater festival in Avignon, the largest in Europe, there is rarely a black or Arab person on stage or in the audience. Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the small southern city is one of the toughest ghettos.

Still, Martel is optimistic that the riots awoke the political elite to rethink everything about integration, including how it affects the cultural mainstream. The goal should not be for these French kids to become white dancers or translate Moliere, he says, but for them “to retain their Arab or African traditions and create a new way of dancing or acting -- to mix it up.”

It might help if someone in Paris would at least hear them, these artists from the “other” France say. During the riots, 10 suburban rappers told the newspaper Liberation that they’d been “sounding the alarm in their songs about their neighborhoods for 15 years.”

The article referred to lyrics from popular rapper Kool Shen, who 13 years ago warned the “higher powers” to come to the suburbs and take a careful look at what was going on: “Heed my serious call, no, it’s not a game at all.” Several years later Rim-K du 113 repeated the warning:

There better not be any slip-ups or it’ll all blow up

the projects are a time-bomb, gonna be put to the test, from the

police chief to the rookies

all of them we detest.

The pen proved mightier

IN the mid-1960s, Bibi Naceri’s family, including six children, was packed into a one-bedroom apartment in Paris. When the state put up a low-income housing project west of the city in Le Montreuil, the Naceris moved. Families were relocated into a series of apartment towers according to their background, Naceri said, and because his mother was French they lived among mostly French families and a few North Africans who had the better jobs in City Hall. But the Naceri kids, whose father was Algerian, found they were more at home with the North Africans from other towers, “the people who were supposedly good for nothing.”

“I was a bad boy,” says Naceri, who is now 47, “a little thief.” He ended up in one of France’s notorious prisons for his role in a holdup. He was 17 with the equivalent of a second-grade education. He started school and worked until he earned a college degree, taking theater classes and writing a play.

In the bar of a five-star hotel, steps from the Arc de Triomphe, Naceri is reluctant to discuss details of his prison stay. He looks suspiciously at the men in dark suits sucking on cigars. “I know in France these people like to hear our stories but they don’t want to meet us,” he explains.

In fact, he was behind bars for 10 years.

Even now, with two screenplays on his resume, he is finding it difficult to peddle his first novel. Editors from top publishing houses tell him they are afraid to sit across from him at lunch.

After his release from prison, just like the protagonist in his first screenplay, “La Mentale” (The Code), Naceri struggled to steer clear of the gangs of his childhood. At the same time he was meeting people working with popular filmmaker Besson, who featured Naceri’s brother Samy in the 1998 thriller “Taxi.” Naceri saw his brother making a living in the movie business and gave it a try. So he would steal, and he would work on “La Mentale.” The 2002 thriller with a message about criminal life on the outskirts of Paris came out to little success, but after Besson read the script he called Naceri to work on “Banlieue 13.” Naceri was also cast in a supporting role as a “Scarface”-type thug.

The movie was successful in no small part because the image of the suburbs was believable and because it featured a new form of French martial arts.

During the riots, Naceri represented Le Montreuil, where he still lives with his wife and children, at a meeting at the prime minister’s residence with local leaders. “If [President Jacques] Chirac does all the things he said he would do at that meeting, I could write another novel or screenplay -- that everything is good in the best of all possible worlds!” says Naceri, quoting a classic French author he read in prison.

As he was leaving the meeting, Naceri noticed that next to his name was written, “Works a lot with Luc Besson.” He chortled recalling the note. Before the riots, his bit of fame had done him no good when he tried to get money from the government for a film and video project he is running to benefit the very type of unemployed, disaffected kids who the police were chasing during this month’s disruptions.

“Black, white, kids with big hair and baggie pants, they all come over to my house to talk about films,” says Naceri, who sees them as hungry to succeed. “My neighbors look at me suspiciously, but somebody has to teach them to tell their stories.”

Musical deliverance

MANU KATCHE is 47 and a top pop and jazz drummer. He has played with many of the greats, including Peter Gabriel, Sting, Miles Davis and the Bee Gees. But it was his classical musical training in the Paris suburbs that helped him distinguish himself.

He too was born in a banlieue, southeast of Paris, to a French mother and immigrant father from Ivory Coast. He was an only child -- and the only child of mixed race in his public school. The other kids were from big families, some French but mostly immigrants. The kids all played soccer in the streets and stole motor scooters. Their parents had jobs in factories and stores. There was not quite the poverty or the crime of the apartment towers where the Naceri kids ran wild, but there weren’t books or musical recordings either.

Katche’s escape had mostly to do with how he was raised -- and his musical talent. His grandmother started him on piano at age 7. A cleaning lady who sold potatoes on the weekends, she had been given music lessons at a young age and saw to it that her grandson practiced. Soon Katche was winning local piano contests and by 15 had moved on to classical percussion -- the timpani, xylophone, vibraphone and anything else he could strike -- and was studying at a regional conservatory; at 19, he won a scholarship to the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and went over that invisible wall to live in the center of Paris.

But after a year he dropped out, and with a drum set strapped to his back -- which might explain why this small, elegant man walks slightly stooped -- Katche trudged through the Paris metros looking in vain for work.

As he recalls, he was the only person of color at the conservatories and even years later, as he began a career in the recording studios, rapidly becoming a highly sought call-session drummer for records and tours, there were few minorities around. “For getting studio work, what mattered was that while I could play jazz and rock, I could play Debussy and Ravel, as well,” he says.

There were many great French African and Arab musicians around Paris then. But it is nearly impossible to win a place in the mainstream without the training and the financial support of the state that for three decades has been resisting the new culture streaming into it.

Through studio work Katche was able to hook up for almost 10 years with France’s prince of swing, singer Michel Jonasz, and eventually with Gabriel, who got him a ticket on two international tours to assist Amnesty International. Known for his “ornamental groove,” as one critic described his style, Katche has since played on 250 recordings.

Shortly before the riots erupted, Katche released his own recording in Europe and Asia titled “Neighborhood.” The music was not inspired by his experiences growing up in Paris’ outlying multiethnic neighborhood; rather, it is an ode to leaving France -- to playing throughout Europe, where he found like-minded musicians with classical knowledge and a love of jazz

“I don’t feel very French, you know. It’s hard to if you’re always treated like an outsider.” It was only in the last few years, when he started appearing on TV, that Katche began to realize how important his personal success could be to the people he knew growing up.

Three years ago, he was asked to be a juror on “Nouvelle Star,” France’s “American Idol.” Since then he is often stopped on the streets by black window washers and Arab grocers saying that, because of his example, they’re going to allow their sons to take up drums.

In fact, it is rare to see ethnic minority faces on television in France. “When they offered me the gig I thought maybe I could help a poor kid find a record deal,” says Katche. “But it is better to have a colored guy, half-black, half-white, someone in between two chairs, on prime-time television talking with great experience.”

Erudite but not untouched

ADEL RIFAAT and Bahgat El-Nadi are Parisian intellectuals. They were born in Egypt, driven into political exile here in the 1960s and have thrived for four decades writing about heady topics such as class conflicts between cultures and nations. In other words, they have lived about as far away as you can get from the scalding rage of the banlieues.

Rifaat and El-Nadi penned six books under the name Mahmoud Hussein and raised families in graceful apartments on the Left Bank. They even became minor celebrities after they appeared on TV talking about solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict. “We have been privileged,” says El-Nadi, “and partly it was our education, partly our heritage as Egyptians.” French friends thought nothing of praising that heritage by referring to Napoleon’s 18th century sojourn to their homeland and then in the next breath referring to other Arabs “in a humiliating way.” El-Nadi would protest but the response was always: “You’re not Arab. You’re Egyptian.”

When they first heard about the pandemonium around Paris this month they were not alarmed. “You see, it’s different here from in the States,” Rifaat says. “For many, many decades America has been used to giving ethnic communities breathing space to struggle their way to a better life. France is a Republic and is supposed to treat all citizens as citizens right away. If you are very smart you will struggle out through school. But in other ways, it is difficult ... “

El-Nadi finishes his thought: “Yes, all other Arabs are treated like cattle with no possibilities.”

Indeed, the riots could all be neatly explained this way. Until Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called the troublemakers racaille.

Rifaat disappears briefly into his study and returns with an open English-French dictionary: “Here it is: ‘racaille -- riffraff, scum.’ ”

Even in Rifaat’s living room, decorated with rugs and art from all over the world, these erudite men felt a connection with an underclass that they have little to do with.

While the graying men who lived through the 1968 riots in Paris cannot condone the violence -- “They don’t have slogans, they don’t ask for things, they just want to negate,” Rifaat complains -- they understand.

At this point El-Nadi grabs a crushed-velvet pillow against his chest. Before he came to Paris, he was in a concentration camp for almost five years for organizing against the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

“There were times that I couldn’t breathe,” El-Nadi says. “My friend would take a pillow and put it against a wall and I would punch it. Without thinking about it you need sometimes to get out the rage.

“I felt that same anger again,” he says, looking at that friend of 50 years, “after I read racaille. Maybe if I had been younger I would have been on the streets too.”

Geraldine Baum can be reached at calendar.letters@latimes.com.