Journey to crack hell
Outstretched hands, somnambulistic silhouettes weave between the cars. Porte de la Chapelle ( in the 18th arrondissement of Paris), in the heart of the afternoon, Marta (all names of drug addicts and traffickers have been changed) collected enough money, in two hours of heat, to buy a "cake" of crack. Or 15 euros for four “pebbles”, each corresponding to two or three inhalations in a pipe. Originally from Portugal, this 32-year-old former hairdresser – who has spent ten on the street – has spoiled teeth and a cockade under her left eye. “I haven't slept for three days,” she blurts out as she heads for Boulevard Ney. Her eyes fixed on the sidewalk, she constantly shakes her head, feverishly, an attitude that addictologists call the “chicken syndrome”. This is usual among “crackers”: victims of hallucinations, they see cakes blooming on the ground.
Marta joins the “Hill”, a sloping piece of land located between the ring road and the access ramp to the North motorway. A few makeshift tents, gutted armchairs, a line to hang up the laundry. About thirty crackers live here permanently. A hundred pass by daily to buy and smoke pancakes. A smell of urine and hot tar wafts over the garbage-strewn grass. “It's the only place where you find rock 24 hours a day,” Marta explains.
No sooner does she walk towards the squat than four "modous" - crack dealers from West Africa - spot her. Marta delivers her “scrap”, 15 euros in small parts. In exchange, a modou gives him a yellowish square resembling a piece of parmesan: crack, a smokable derivative of cocaine, the effect of which is both faster and more powerful. The powder is mixed with a basic solution which allows the active ingredient to survive at the point of combustion.
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After retrieving a “doseur”—a term inherited from the days when pipes were made with pastis dispensers—Marta squats near a pile of trash infested with rats. She passes the flame of her lighter over the pebble to solder it to the filter, then sets it ablaze, taking deep puffs. His eyelids quiver under the load of the product, which releases a confused stream of words. "Me, I don't sleep here, it's too crazy," she says. Not long ago, a friend had his knuckle cut off while he was sleeping, just like that, for no reason... I'm squatting from right to left, waiting to see my two daughters, 9 and 11, again... are placed in Lille. »
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