France’s latest newspaper Hawker gets the order of merit in 50 years

He is France’s last newspaper Chaker; Maybe the latter in Europe.

Ali Akbar knocks on the side shore of Paris for over 50 years, the paper and the last headline on the lips.

And now he must be officially recognized for his contribution to French culture. President Emmanuel Macron – who once bought the newspapers from Mr. Akbar in his student, is to decorate it next month with the Order of merits, one of the highest honors of France.

“When I started here in 1973, there were 35 or 40 violence in Paris,” he says. ‘Now I’m alone.

“It has become too hindered. Now everything is digital. People just want to consult with phones.”

These days, on their rounds through the Cafe Fashion Saint-Germain, Mr. Akbar can hope to sell about 30 copies of Le Monde. It retains half the sale cost, but does not return the return for profitability.

Even before the Internet, he sold 80 copies during the first hour after the newspaper edition.

“In ancient times, people will be a crowd around me, looking for paper. Now I have to chase customers to try to sell it,” he says.

Not that the reduction of trade is remotely disturbed by Mr. Akbar, who says he continues to go to the joy of work.

“I am a joyful person. And I’m free. I am completely independent of this work. No one gives me orders. That’s why I do it.”

A favorable 72-year-old guy is a familiar and very favorite figure in the neighborhood. “I came here for the first time in the 1960s, and I grew up with Ali. He looks like a brother,” says one woman.

“He knows everyone. And he is so cheerful,” the other says.

Ali Akbar was born in Rovalpindi and made his way to Europe in the late 1960s, first arrived in Amsterdam, where he worked on board a cruise liner. In 1972, the ship clung to the French city of Ruen, and a year later he found himself in Paris. In the 1980s, he received his residence documents.

“I wasn’t hippie then, but I knew a lot of hippies,” he says with his characteristic laughter.

“When I was in Afghanistan on his way to Europe, I landed with a group that tried to force me to smoke.

“I told them sorry, but I had a mission in my life, and next month Kabul wasn’t going to sleep in Kabul!”

He met celebrities and writers at the Saint-Germain Intellectual Center. One day Elton John bought him milk tea at Brasserie Lip. And having sold the documents before the prestigious university of sciences, he was familiar with the generations of future politicians as President Macron.

So, how changed the legendary left bank of the neighborhood since then At the auction (with a scream)?

“The atmosphere is not like that,” he complains. “Then the publishers and writers and actors and music were everywhere. There was a soul in this place. But now it’s just a tourist city.

“The soul went,” he says, “but he laughs like him.