They squeeze in. Then squeeze a little more. And then a little more again.
People spill off buses after realizing private cars can’t get anywhere near the place. A Russian security firm—flown in on short notice—organizes the line with a method that keeps everyone quiet. It’s simple: anyone who starts complaining is removed from the queue, photographed, and banned from the compound forever. Or at least until the war ends.
Whispers ripple. Each person clutches a document folder heavy with “proof” that they deserve French citizenship. Some grip yellowed papers like a lifeline; others hold internet printouts sent by relatives abroad; a few display handwritten declarations notarized in firm blue ink.
An old man edges up to the rope and tries to find an angle forward. After the guard’s stony silence, he starts to shout: “I was there! I was with the Résistance! You won’t teach me what it means to be French. I’m more French than all of you!”
Two, three minutes pass. A special security unit emerges from the embassy, lifts the old man by the elbows, and hauls him away. He kicks once or twice before they dump him by the bus stop. Only one woman leaves the line to check if he’s breathing, and moments later she slips back into the crush.
Airplanes pass over Tel Aviv. Sirens rise and fall, but no one moves. If a rocket falls here, it falls. The only exit ticket sits at the end of the line, with the scowling clerks who would very much prefer to be in Paris but are condemned, in the name of “public service,” to shut themselves inside the embassy.
The ambassador wanted to shutter the offices, board a plane, and just lift off. August heat, the heat of shells, the constant soot from the fighting on the shore, and the knowledge that at any minute the Muslim phalanxes—flush with Gulf money—might take what’s left: all of it had become unbearable. He’d phoned a friend at the Élysée, tried to pull strings, but nothing helped. The president had given an order: he stays until every French citizen is safely evacuated.
He’d tried explaining to the suits at the palace that there were “other French” here—people who immigrated years ago and kept the passport mostly to shorten lines into the EU. Their ties were thin; if anything, they carried a simmering resentment toward the Republic. They hadn’t been to France in years, didn’t really miss it, had built little Francophone enclaves and even opened a few respectable boulangeries. It didn’t matter. They were here; he had to approve their departure; only then could he fold up the flag—if it wasn’t already too late.
Rumors move faster than shrapnel. First, only current passport holders would fly. Then, everyone could board, but France would sort them on arrival and send back those who failed the criteria. The cruelest whisper said nothing would help: thirty thousand Franco-Israelis had already gone since the war began, and Paris had decided to slam the door. Things weren’t great there either, and the president couldn’t survive the optics of letting “refugees” who weren’t really citizens return. That one was denied quickly.
All that remained was to stand in the endless queue and hope.
After four hours she reached the desk.
“Vous parlez français?” the clerk barked.
“No,” she whispered.
“Then what do you want from us? What kind of Frenchwoman are you?” the clerk snapped in surprisingly good Hebrew, a souvenir of several years posted in Tel Aviv.
“I want to go. My parents are French. I want to go there.”
“Were you ever registered at the consulate? Do you have documents?”
“They didn’t register me. I only have copies of their French IDs.”
“So what do you expect? You’re not a minor. If you weren’t registered before, there’s nothing to do now. We handle real citizens, not people who should have filed years ago. I’m sorry. Next!”
She was swept out of the line. She shuffled toward the bus stop on small, stunned steps. It was over. She was paying for one casual lapse of her mother’s—back when France seemed finished with its Jews and no one guessed it might become the last way out. Bombers droned somewhere above. She breathed the heavy air and prayed. She prayed that the whole world would pay for the fall of Israel.
