How could anyone defend last weekend’s violent protests in France? In Paris alone, about 450 businesses were damaged, and about half of those were looted, according to authorities. Shopkeepers saw their livelihoods destroyed, their employees attacked, and their faith in the French Republic deeply shaken.
But defending the rioters was exactly what influencer and college student Lola-Fleur Whittaker did on Monday night during a French television program called “La Grande Confrontation.” “Vos boutiques, c’est bien mignon,” she said mockingly, which translates to “Your shops, so sweet.”
That was too much for Jhemima Sheilha, who was also on the program, to bear in silence. “It’s my life, Lola,” said Sheilha, whose new shop near Place de la République, Caffé Urban Bakery, was smashed with sledgehammers and ransacked. “What justifies terrorizing people’s lives?” Whittaker rolled her eyes.
We asked Sheilha, 36, to describe what happened at the bakery she and her husband spent five years toiling to open, how she confronted the looters who took everything, and why she believes her business is now at risk of crumbling, along with France itself.
—The Editors
When I arrived in France in August 1999, I did not know my father. I had been raised by my uncle and my aunt after the death of my mother, Henriette, an activist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who campaigned against the country’s former president, Mobutu Sese Seko. In 1994 she was poisoned by a member of her own family who supported the president. She was 36.
On the day I was born, one of my older sisters, who was only 3, died of sickle cell disease. My mother learned of her death as she was leaving the maternity ward. She left the hospital with a new child and a new grief to carry.
My mother did not have much money. She sold water in plastic bags at the markets, and sometimes, when she had no choice, she left my other sister and me alone. On the day my mother died, I was 4. She had gone to a political meeting, after which she was supposed to pick us up. She never came home.
After my mother’s death, I stayed with my aunt until I arrived in France to live with my father. I had never met him before. For the first few years, we lived in a 1,000-square-foot room in the Paris suburbs. It was very hard. I had been a good student, but now I was failing, and even though I was seeing a speech therapist, progress was slow.