The remarkable life of Paris's last newspaper seller from Pakistan

Ali Akbar was always a local celebrity in Paris — now, his fame has gone global.

These days, media outlets from around the world want to talk to him after President Emmanuel Macron awarded him the Order of Merit, one of France’s highest honors. The ceremony will be held in September.

His claim to fame? Being the last newspaper seller in France.

But that’s only part of it. His journey — from a Pakistani immigrant who once slept on the streets of Paris and in a rat-infested cellar — has struck a chord with many.

At 73, with no formal schooling, Akbar speaks with the confidence of someone who has lived life entirely on his own terms.

When I first contacted him over WhatsApp, he looked at my display picture and told me I resembled his daughter-in-law. We laughed, bonded instantly, and set a date for a Zoom interview.

When we finally spoke, his energy lit up the screen. The conversation flowed so easily that our interview stretched well past an hour.

Ali Akbar with actress Carole Bouquet in the early 2010sAli Akbar

Akbar told me he first arrived in France as a waiter on a cruise ship. On shore, he met a Nepalese man who offered him a restaurant job for 800 francs a month — good money in 1970.

But life in Paris was full of cultural shocks for a 19-year-old from a poor family in Pakistan's northern city of Rawalpindi. One day, a hotel guest wrongly accused him of spying through a peephole. He lost his job and ended up on the street.

“It was a nightmare. I thought I would leave Paris and go back to Greece.”

On a dark highway, trying to hitchhike to the nearest train station, he was picked up by a truck driver — an encounter he prefers not to detail — and left stranded in the woods. Eventually, he found some gendarmes who didn’t check his papers (because his visa had expired) and let him go. Back on the road, a French couple stopped for him.

“I told them my troubles, and can you believe it? They took me to their home and gave me a room. I stayed with them for many months.”

Large mural of Ali Akbar painted on a wall in Latin Quarter, Paris in 2011Ali Akbar

The couple lived in the Latin Quarter, Paris’s cultural heart and home to the Sorbonne.

“I didn’t know French. I was lost in an alien country with no visa and no job,” he said. Then, one day, he spotted an Argentine student holding a porn magazine.

“Are you allowed to sell this? We can’t sell these where I come from,” he asked.

To his surprise, not only was it allowed, but it was profitable. Still, he chose a tamer path: weekly magazines like Charlie Hebdo. And that’s how his career as a newspaper seller began.

He slept under a bridge by the Seine and stored his papers in the wine cellar of a Tunisian restaurant — which he later realized could double as his bedroom.

“I was accompanied by fat rats. I slept there for six years, can you believe it?” he laughed.

Once a week, he’d shower and wash his clothes at a nearby hotel.

“For a long time, I didn’t know clothes had to be ironed. I’d just put on a clean shirt and off I went with my magazines.”

Ali Akbar feeds birds in the heart of Paris in the 2010sAli Akbar

Even then, he sent money home to his mother, now 97. Somewhere along the way, he married his cousin from Pakistan and raised five sons.

But it was his personality — and the jokes he cracked while selling newspapers — that won hearts.

He’d shout absurd headlines to make people laugh:
“Monica Lewinsky is pregnant with twins!”
“Clinton has fathered three kids!”
“My wife left me!”

Over the years, he met Bill Clinton and Elton John twice — although he didn’t recognize the singer at first.

“He told me he wanted to buy tea for me. He told me he was British. I said I was from Pakistan, and both of us drank tea with milk.

“Later, I saw him on TV at Diana's funeral singing Candle in the Wind.

“I was blown away. I said, 'I knew him',” he laughs.

On receiving the Order of Merit, Akbar says he feels grateful.

“They all give me so much respect,” he said, adding that Macron once bought papers from him as a student.

In his twilight years, he says he is happy because he has good health and his children are well settled — but he still sells newspapers every day.

“I want to stay fit, you know,” he says, breaking into his signature laugh.