France’s last newspaper hawker gets Order of Merit after 50 years

He is France’s last newspaper hawker; maybe the last in Europe.

Ali Akbar has been pounding the pavement of Paris’s Left Bank for more than 50 years, papers under the arm and on his lips the latest headline.

And now he is to be officially recognised for his contribution to French culture. President Emmanuel Macron – who once as a student himself bought newspapers from Mr Akbar – is to decorate him next month with the Order of Merit, one of France’s highest honours.

“When I began here in 1973 there were 35 or 40 of us hawkers in Paris,” he says. “Now I am alone.

“It became too discouraging. Everything is digital now. People just want to consult their telephones.”

These days, on his rounds via the cafés of fashionable Saint-Germain, Mr Akbar can hope to sell around 30 copies of Le Monde. He keeps half the sale price, but gets no refund for returns.

Back before the Internet, he would sell 80 copies within the first hour of the newspaper’s afternoon publication.

“In the old days people would crowd around me looking for the paper. Now I have to chase down clients to try to sell one,” he says.

Not that the decline in trade remotely bothers Mr Akbar, who says he keeps going for the sheer joy of the job.

“I am a joyous person. And I am free. With this job, I am completely independent. There is no-one giving me orders. That’s why I do it.”

The sprightly 72-year-old is a familiar and much-loved figure in the neighbourhood. “I first came here in the 1960s and I’ve grown up with Ali. He is like a brother,” says one woman.

“He knows everyone. And he is such fun,” says another.

Ali Akbar was born in Rawalpindi and made his way to Europe in the late 1960s, arriving first at Amsterdam where he got work on board a cruise liner. In 1972 the ship docked in the French city of Rouen, and a year later he was in Paris. He got his residency papers in the 1980s.

“Me, I wasn’t a hippy back then, but I knew a lot of hippies,” he says with his characteristic laugh.

“When I was in Afghanistan on my way to Europe I landed up with a group who tried to make me smoke hashish.

“I told them sorry, but I had a mission in life, and it wasn’t to spend the next month sleeping in Kabul!”

In the once intellectual hub of Saint-Germain he got to meet celebrities and writers. Elton John once bought him milky tea at Brasserie Lipp. And selling papers in front of the prestigious Sciences-Po university, he was acquainted with generations of future politicians – like President Macron.

So how has the legendary Left Bank neighbourhood changed since he first held aloft a copy of Le Monde and flogged it à la criée (with a shout)?

“The atmosphere isn’t the same,” he laments. “Back then there were publishers and writers everywhere – and actors and musicians. The place had soul. But now it is just tourist-town.

“The soul has gone,” he says – but he laughs as he does.