Anthony and Hacine Bouali's Motorcycle Feud

Anthony and Hacine Bouali’s Motorcycle Feud turns a stolen motorcycle into a confrontation over fear, humiliation, and the possibility of killing. Anthony arrives armed and ready to shoot Hacine, but when the scooter stalls, the machinery interrupts his resolve: he lowers his arm, spits in Hacine’s face, and escapes. The failed engine changes the course of their conflict without ending it.

The Theft and the Feud’s Escalation

The confrontation follows Anthony’s departure from a household in crisis. At breakfast, Hélène and Anthony are unable either to leave or to stay; while Irène urges them to contact the police, shelters, and a lawyer, Hélène sits silent, stirring her coffee. Anthony takes his backpack and climbs out through the bathroom window. At the Metro Arcade, he studies himself in the large pale-green mirror, touches his right eye, and heads outside with a new sense that the time has come.

He chooses the fastest scooter he can find, a BMW fitted with a Pollini exhaust manifold. Working in a deserted street, Anthony removes the fairing, forces a resistant screw with his screwdriver, and breaks the plastic with an unpleasant crack. He then attacks the steering lock, yanks the handlebars, and kick-starts the motor. The exhaust’s sharp whine gives away the theft: the owner runs out of the arcade, and other boys follow. Anthony speeds down Rue Michelet, reaching nearly fifty miles per hour before slowing for the turn toward the upper town. His heart pounds, but he no longer questions his decision. At a red light, he chooses to wait for green rather than risk running it; the pause leaves him exposed to the encounter ahead.

The Armed Confrontation

At the red light, a voice interrupts Anthony’s wait. By the time he reaches the shelter, Hacine has left it and is walking directly toward him. The boys curse in three languages, and a couple of them begin to come out as well. Hacine faces Anthony with flat defiance, telling him he has nerve to come there. Anthony slides the strap of his backpack, opens it, and reaches inside. When his hand emerges holding the MAC 50, the others scatter back under the shelter. Eliott, trapped in his wheelchair, suddenly recognizes how exposed he is.

Anthony aims straight ahead with his left eye closed. Hacine tells him not to get excited, trying to remain calm, though the sun is full in his face and he can still make out Anthony’s head, clenched fist, and gun muzzle. Fear urges him to beg or run. But the lesson he has learned since childhood is that, in his world, the price of seeming cowardly can exceed the pain of standing one’s ground. He remains facing the pistol rather than retreating into the role of victim.

The scene narrows around the weapon’s immediate physical consequence. Anthony cocks the hammer; from this distance, he knows he could not miss, and the pressure of a finger could turn the confrontation into Hacine’s death. The narrative spells out the bullet’s path through the boy’s head, making the possibility of murder a mechanical sequence rather than an abstraction. Neither can formulate that sequence in such terms, but both understand what the gun means. Anthony is calm on the vibrating scooter and thinks he is going to shoot: he owes his father at least that much. A drop of sweat runs down his neck as the decision seems to reach its final instant.

The Stall and Its Aftermath

The scooter stalls at the instant when Anthony’s intention seems settled. The failure is small beside the violence he is preparing to commit, yet it makes the shot unthinkable: his arm relaxes, and sweat drenches him. The machine that carried him into the confrontation and kept vibrating beneath him no longer sustains the momentum of his decision. Anthony cannot simply withdraw, however. Hacine is still standing close, aflame with anger and ashamed, while the threat remains unresolved between them.

Anthony’s substitute for shooting is to spit in Hacine’s face. It is an act of contempt rather than reconciliation: the gun does not fire, but Anthony still makes the encounter physically degrading. Hacine does not dare wipe the saliva from his nose and mouth. The humiliation is immediate, and the standoff ends not with an apology or an explanation but with Anthony’s flight.

The stalled scooter also makes escape awkward. Anthony has to use his screwdriver to get away, fiddling with the vehicle before he can finally flee. The tool used to break the steering lock now helps him leave, linking the theft to the confrontation’s disordered exit. What follows is not closure: for Hacine, the scene remains unforgivable. Anthony has spared him from the bullet while leaving behind a deliberate insult, so the feud shifts from the prospect of lethal violence to a humiliation neither boy can treat as settled.

The Feud’s Unresolved Meaning

The encounter gives their hostility a new form without repairing it. For a moment, the gun makes the difference between them brutally plain: Anthony can kill Hacine, while Hacine must decide whether to flee or remain standing. When the scooter stalls, that imbalance does not become forgiveness. Anthony’s spit leaves Hacine publicly and physically humiliated, and his escape leaves the insult unanswered. The feud survives the abandoned shot as an injury neither boy can mistake for reconciliation.