A photo of Nicolas Sarkozy's wide grin fills televisions in apartments throughout the graffiti-stained slab-architecture housing projects of La Forestiere. He has just been declared the next president of the French Republic, one that suddenly feels further away than ever for many residents here. In an apartment living room 14 floors up -- where a wooden board fills in for a broken window- democracy doesn't feel very fair in this moment. "I'm disgusted that 53 percent of French people could vote for Sarkozy," says a heretofore hopeful college student, Yousra Chergui, as she fights back tears. "I live in the suburbs," says the prim 21-year-old. "It will get worse and worse now."

Chergui lives here in Clichy-sous-Bois, amid the open sore that has resulted from decades of France's failed economic and ethnic integration (Islam, Integration and Assimilation ). But more immediately relevant to Chergui, this neighborhood is the incarnation of the domestic challenge that Sarkozy may be least able to deal with. The incoming president has promised to "solve the case" of Clichy, words that sound especially callous in housing projects where time and change are marked by decay.

Downstairs, I speak with Byron, a comic book artist who finds creative inspiration from the lives of young people around him. He sits astride his cruiser bicycle inside of a building entrance, but the breeze still tussles his American-style sweatshirt because the glass façade and the glass doors were destroyed years ago and never replaced by building management. This is Byron's de facto office, his window onto the future. "'Solving' Clichy will be Sarkozy's last concern," he says with scorn. "He is a provocateur. Everyone knows that. Only [French ethnic] 'purists' like Sarkozy. To them, we're all just 'immigrants' here."

Anti-Sarkozy sentiment in Clichy could hardly be clearer - and it isn't just the crude graffiti messages to him that he will surely never see. Fear of and anger with Sarkozy drove turnout up to an astounding 80 percent in Clichy-sous-Bois, with 61.70 percent of the vote going to Socialist Ségolène Royal. (For more on the 'Hood's electoral mobilization against Sarkozy, see: Sarkasm: Rapping le Vote ). But with newfound political involvement, comes disappointment, as is clear from the tears welling up in Chergui's eyes upstairs. And as all of France learned during the riots of 2005, the tears of Clichy-sous-Bois can quickly turn to fire.

A quarter of an hour after the election results were known, word reached the La Forestiere apartment complex that young men were amassing on the same street where pitched battles with cops and riot police marked the beginning of three weeks of rioting across France in 2005. That time, the pressure cooker blew after police chased a trio of French teenagers (children of immigrant parents) into a power station where they were accidentally electrocuted. Two died. Sarkozy, who was then minister of the Interior, quickly declared that the kids were thieves. (A subsequent investigation proved him wrong.) Days earlier, Sarkozy had made a highly publicized late-night visit to the tough Parisian suburban ghetto of Argenteuil, where he promised to "get rid of the scum." Young people in such neighborhoods - and in Clichy-sous-Bois -- felt like he was talking about them.

So it was no surprise in Clichy that by 8:30pm on election night, smoke rose from a car in the center of a housing complex known as Les Bosquets. Firefighters - accompanied by undercover police in an unmarked van -- worked to douse the acrid black smoke. Hidden by a vast tree nearby, two-dozen kids dressed in hoodies watched attentively. Some were surely wondering whether the fire would spread, as it did in 2005.

It did. During the night, no fewer than 730 cars burned in urban France, including 35 in Paris itself. On the streets of Paris, as well as several other cities -- hundreds of anti-Sarkozy anarchists and others fought pitched battles with authorities in riot gear amid picturesque settings like Paris' Bastille, the Place de la Nation and the Place de la Republique. As per French tradition, protesters threw projectiles like bottles or rocks at the cops who responded with tear gas. In all, during the night, nearly 600 people were detained and 78 police were injured.

But looking toward the future, the real concern for France lives in the ghettos. As night fell out in front of the Gout du Halal (Taste of Halal) Sandwich shop in Clichy-sous-Bois, passersby contemplated the future. A somber 30-something man in black Nikes, who didn't want to give his name, didn't condone the burning of cars, but he understood why it happens. "What future does a 16-year old have in the ghetto? If he wants to work, what can he do? Where does he have to go? He's got nothing."

Biting ghetto-humor arrived as a man drove up yelling: "Sarko got 53 percent. I have residency, but you guys are screwed!"

Not everyone was laughing, though. A soft-spoken man in a skullcap and a wispy three-inch beard approached me in front of the sandwich shop to ask what I thought of Sarkozy's victory. Monder, a devout 33-year-old Muslim on his way to the nighttime prayer, converted to Islam after returning from Bosnia, where he fought in the 1990s. He didn't vote because, well, God's vote is the one that counts. "If Sarkozy won, it was God's will to issue us a challenge," he said philosophically. But he did issue a warning to Sarkozy. "If Sarkozy wants to go up against religion and the Creator, he will have problems." As kids in another nearby project set another car ablaze minutes later - and as they rained rocks down on firefighters who arrived to put it out - it was clear that Sarkozy's France already does.