There was a time when the fate of Paris was inextricably linked to that of Gavroche, the street urchin imagined by Victor Hugo in his masterpiece Les Misérables–mischievous, irreverent, yet driven by an instinctive generosity that made him a paradoxical embodiment of the French people. The popular hero of our time is a certain Hamza, a slightly plump teenager who walks about bare-chested and sprays passers-by with a water pistol, demands a ‘toll’ from them to cross the Canal Saint-Martin–a branch of the Seine in the north-east of the capital–insults women with obscene vulgarity, provokes the police, films each of his provocations and turns his own delinquency into a daily soap opera on TikTok.
From Gavroche to Hamza: France’s Crisis of Authority
Hamza is more than a viral delinquent—he embodies a France where shame has vanished and outrage has become fame.
