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Straits Times

Extra, extra: Read all about the last newspaper hawker in Paris

PARIS – Among the literary cafes and chic boutiques of the Saint-Germain-des-Pres quarter of Paris, an impish man with a wad of newspapers makes the rounds, his trademark cry of 'Ca y est!' or 'That's it!' echoing down narrow cobblestone streets. Mr Ali Akbar of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, is a man with a ready smile who has been hawking newspapers for a half-century. Sometimes, he spices his offerings with made-up stories. 'Ca y est! The war is over; Putin asks forgiveness,' was one recent pitch that caused grim hilarity. From Cafe de Flore to Brasserie Lipp – two famed establishments where food and culture are intertwined – Mr Akbar plies a dying trade in a dwindling commodity. He is considered to be the last newspaper hawker in France. The profession may have reached its zenith in Paris in 1960, when American actress Jean Seberg was immortalised on film with several newspapers under her arm crying 'New York Herald Tribune!', as she strolled on the Champs-Elysees, pursued by French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. Nobody in French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard's classic movie Breathless (1960) is buying The Trib except Belmondo's character, who is unhappy that the paper has no horoscope, but unhappier still to discover that his charm makes little impression on the beauty and faux American innocence of Seberg's character, yet another foreigner smitten by Paris and angling to make a buck. Mr Akbar is one of them, too. 'Sah-yay!' is roughly how his cry to buy sounds. Through persistence and good humour, he has become 'part of the cultural fabric of Paris', said Mr David-Herve Boutin, an entrepreneur active in the arts. 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'Perhaps it will help me get my French passport,' said Mr Akbar, who sometimes has a withering take on life, having seen much of its underside. He has a residence permit, but his application for French nationality is mired in Gallic bureaucracy. A stack of newspapers under the arm of Mr Akbar. PHOTO: DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/NYTIMES Mr Akbar moves at startling speed. A sinewy bundle of energy at 72, he clocks several kilometres a day, selling Le Monde, Les Echos and other daily newspapers from around noon until midnight. Dismissive of the digital, he has become a human networker of a district once dear to writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernest Hemingway, now overrun by brand-hungry tourists. 'How are you, dear Ali?' asks Ms Veronique Voss, a psychotherapist, as he enters Cafe Fleurus near the Jardin du Luxembourg. 'I worried about you yesterday because it was so hot.' Heat does not deter Mr Akbar, who has known worse. He thanks Ms Voss with a big smile and takes off his dark blue Le Monde cap. 'When you have nothing, you take whatever you can get,' he says. 'I had nothing.' At his next stop, an Italian cafe, Mr Jean-Philippe Bouyer, a stylist who has worked for French luxury brand Dior, greets Mr Akbar warmly. 'Ali is indispensable,' Mr Bouyer says. 'Something very positive and rare in our times emanates from him. He kept the soul of a child.' Born in 1953 into a family of 10 children, two of whom died young, Mr Akbar grew up in Rawalpindi amid rampant poverty and open sewers, eating leftovers, sleeping five to a room, leaving school when he was 12, working odd jobs and eventually teaching himself to read. Born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Mr Akbar left home in his late teens in search of a better life. PHOTO: DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/NYTIMES 'I did not want to wear clothes that reeked of misery,' he said. 'I always dreamed of giving my mother a house with a garden.' To advance, he had to leave. He procured a passport at 18. All he knew of Europe was the Eiffel Tower and Dutch tulips. A winding road took him by bus to Kabul, Afghanistan, where Western hippies, most of them high, abounded in 1970 – but that was not Mr Akbar's thing. He went on by road to Iran where, he said, 'the shah was an omnipresent God'. Eventually, he reached Athens, Greece, and wandered the streets looking for work. A businessperson took pity and, noting his eagerness, offered him a job on a ship. Mr Akbar cleaned the kitchen floor. He washed dishes. He was faced by aggressive mockery from bawdy shipmates for his refusal, as a Muslim, to drink. In Shanghai, he abandoned ship rather than face further taunting. The world is round, and around he went, back to Rawalpindi, and then on the westward road again to Europe. His mother deserved better – that conviction drove him through every humiliation. Visa issues in Greece and eventual expulsion landed him back in Pakistan a second time. His family thought he was mad, but, undaunted, he tried again. This time, he washed up in Rouen, France. It had taken only two years. After working there in a restaurant, he moved on to Paris in 1973. 'By the time I got to Paris, I had an overwhelming desire to anchor myself,' Mr Akbar said. 'Since I began circling the planet, I hadn't met many people who didn't disappoint me. 'But if you have no hope, you're dead.' He slept under bridges and in cellars. He encountered racism. He spent a couple of months in Burgundy harvesting cucumbers. Mr Akbar began hawking newspapers in Parisian streets in the early 1970s. PHOTO: DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/NYTIMES At last, in 1974, Mr Akbar found his calling when he ran into an Argentine student hawking newspapers. He inquired how he could do likewise and was soon in the streets of Paris with copies of satirical magazines Charlie Hebdo and Hara-Kiri, now defunct. He liked to walk, enjoyed contact with people and, even if margins were small, could eke out a living. Fast forward 51 years, and Mr Akbar is still at it. Because Saint-Germain is the home of intellectuals, actors and politicians, he has rubbed shoulders with the influential. From former presidents Francois Mitterrand and Bill Clinton to actress-singer Jane Birkin and author Bernard-Henri Levy, he has met them all. None of this has gone to his head. He remains a modest guy with a winning manner. His main newspaper is now Le Monde, which he acquires at a kiosk for about US$2 (S$2.50) a copy and sells for almost double that. He makes around US$70 on an average day and rarely takes a day off. Newspaper reading remains ingrained in France. Friends may buy two or three copies and slip him €10 (S$15) or invite him to lunch. He has no pension, but he gets by – and his mother got a Rawalpindi garden. Mr Akbar will receive a Legion d'Honneur, France's highest order of merit, at a ceremony at the Elysee Palace in autumn. PHOTO: DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/NYTIMES From an arranged marriage with a Pakistani woman in 1980, Akbar has five sons, one of them with autism and another with various physical ailments. A sixth child died at birth. Life has not been easy, one reason 'I have made it my business to make people laugh', he says. He is deeply grateful to France, which he calls a land of asylum, not least for the education it gave his children. But he believes that as a brown-skinned foreigner, he 'will never be completely accepted'. Some 50 years lat er, Mr Akbar remains on the move. Lose sight of him for a second and he is gone. But then comes the cry, 'Ca y est! Marine is marrying Jordan!', a reference to far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her young protege Jordan Bardella. His jokes are a sales pitch, but they also reflect a yearning for a happier, simpler world . NYTIMES