On a sunny August day, Sarcelles feels like any working-class suburb on the outskirts of northern Paris. Immigrant shoppers fill streets where the council has done its best to bring greenery to the drab cityscape. Jets whine overhead from the airport.
All seems normal, yet there is tension in the air. On the Avenue Auguste Perret, steel shutters remain drawn over the burnt facade of Naouri, a kosher supermarket that was put to the torch in anti-Jewish demonstrations.
Known as “La Petite Jérusalem” because of the Sephardic Jewish population that grew there when France withdrew from its north African colonies, Sarcelles was one of the flashpoints of violent protests in which nine French synagogues were attacked last month. As a Jewish enclave in the heavily