Sinan Can came, saw and reported from the drains of Europe

I quickly checked whether my screen might have been set too dark. But no,Sinan Can’s new docuseries Fault lines showed unfiltered the gray reality ofeveryday life in Europe’s drains. There were also stars twinkling in thefirmament, but there were not many.

Four nights in a row this week, Can took us to neighborhoods in Paris, London,Stockholm and Brussels where he spent a lot of time over the past year. Inpress releases, BNNVARA describes these areas as vulnerable. Battered topieces often seemed a better formulation for the poor neighborhoods whereunemployment, radicalization and crime go hand in hand. The episode aboutdilapidated flats in the Parisian Clichy-sous-Bois was especially depressing.The mess in the stairwells, the sluggishness of young Algerian residents (‘wehave to steal’), the gang violence. They buzzed an unanswered question: Whyhasn’t Paris long since expropriated and demolishing these privately ownedbuildings?

shabby little flats

But Sinan Can didn’t walk around as a know-it-all, nothing like that annoyingparent or girlfriend who always knows how to tell you exactly how to tackleyour problems. No, Can came, saw and reported. He lived in shabby littleflats, made contact with local residents, learned in-depth stories andlistened. Himself a migrant child, Muslim and familiar with threats fromextremists, he had little trouble finding the pain points of life in oldneighborhoods where the original inhabitants and structures give way toIslamic newcomers.

As calm as his approach was, Can became very irritated on two occasions. Onetime during a conversation with the former chairman of the Great Mosque ofPantin, who distributed the incendiary video that led to the beheading ofteacher Samuel Paty. And it still finds defensible that he posted that video.Can also seemed to explode at a misogynistic hate preacher who can spew hisanti-democratic poison unhindered in London. Shocking, how many sharia courtsoperate there and how many men-brothers oppress their wives in this way. Forthis episode you would like the series too concrete rot can say: how can ademocratic country allow these kinds of opposing forces?

Looking for the light

I already wrote it: my screen looked dark. What if I close my eyes and lookfor the light in the series? Then I remember patrolling mothers in the Swedishevening cold. See the first black policewoman in Stockholm’s Rinkeby districtand hope she’s proud of herself. Ditto for those girls playing soccer inMolenbeek in Brussels, where a Belgian in a neighborhood pub said that he hadbeen happy with his Moroccan wife for thirty years. And where the CEO ofGoogle handed a big check to Ibrahim Ouassari for his successful tech trainingcompany MolenGeek.

This Ibrahim had as a boy next door Ibrahim Abdeslam, in 2015 one of theattackers in Paris.

Talk about life twists.

Because societies are never finished and static, an essential comment fromFather Dominican, professor and youth worker Johan Leman in Brussels, remains.In his Belgian modesty, he carefully raised the question: “Are politiciansreally committed to these very concrete people?” Sinan Can certainly seems to.

_Renate van der Bas and Maaike Bos write columns about television five times a