430 meters
Dec 28, 2009 11:47:36 GMT
Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2009 11:47:36 GMT
Every day I take a little trip of 430 meters which takes me across several continents. Out my door is a standard view of Paris with the metro station, the news kiosk, the colonne Morris (which Americans erroneously think is called a kiosk) covered with the typical theatre posters, a couple of cafés and banks, the ubiquitous pharmacies, a McDonald’s, three boulangeries, a supermarket, the post office and some strategically placed plane trees. I consider it to be an extremely convenient corner and it is the main reason that I chose my apartment. When I was looking for a place to buy, I saw nicer apartments in completely tranquil streets, but this is where I wanted to be and I have never regretted it. You get used to the noise, and anyway my double glazed windows are very efficient.
I walk down the street, and there is an exotic touch almost immediately with the Istanbul Oriental grocery store. I have never been inside, but I can see just about everything the sell anyway because it has a completely open front, the better to entice its clientele. Displayed on the sidewalk are the invariable 2 liter bottles of multicolored Mirinda soda, the giant Senegalese cans of tuna, the Dutch Zwan ‘hallal luncheon meat’ (Spam), enormous bags of pistachios, peanuts, dates, almonds and the big square cartons of 30 eggs for 2.99€. All of this stuff must sell very well, because every single one of the shops of this type seem to display these same items in front, along with the 10 kilo bags of potatoes and onions. It really makes me wonder sometimes about the immigrant diet.
There is a normal bookstore (I have two nice bookstores within a block of my apartment, which is one of the indications that the neighborhood is not as poor as it sometimes looks), followed by African fashions and a place that promises ‘American-style’ fake fingernails, hair extensions, wigs, olive oil for hair care and other products to turn African women into spectacular creatures. It does not display the poster published by the Paris health authorities about the danger of skin lightening products, which is pretty much an admission that they sell these products.
There’s the little Chinese florist where I rarely buy anything, but I do every now and then, you never know. Tulips are cheap and plentiful at the moment, but I know that I can’t take any to my mother’s room, because the blossoms would be kissing the surface of the table by the next morning due to the heat. Then there are the Chinese jewelry stores, which seem to be frequented mostly young Maghrebi and African men in need of big golden necklaces and bracelets so that they can look like the guys on music videos.
Of course, every 20 meters there is also a kebab shop, formerly operated by Turks pretending to be Greek (‘sandwiches grecs’) but now mostly run by Indians pretending to be Maghrebi.
There’s the barber shop where I go; I guess I should call it a hairdresser considering the prices it charges. I used to have the same barber as the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, but Mr. Jeunet upgraded to another neighborhood after making Amélie, Alien Resurrection and A Very Long Engagement. Just as I reach the Monoprix with its Indian cashiers, I cross the street to change direction.
One of the first things on the new street is the headquarters of France Terre d’Asile, the refugee assistance center. Usually I pass it when it is already closed for the day, but the crowds are really amazing when I am there during the opening hours. There is always a big crowd of Afghans, Iraqis, Chinese, Somalis, Bangladeshis, sub-Saharan Africans and of course plenty of other unidentifiable nationalities. I can spot some South Americans sometimes, and also some Russians, Uzbecks and other former soviet sectors of Central Asia. Most of them are economic rather than political refugees and don’t have a rat’s chance in hell of getting residence papers. But the organization helps them to get medical treatment, temporary housing and meals, and I often see some of the young men (80% of them are young men) coming out with a little bag of toiletries – disposable razors, shaving cream, bars of soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes…
The place closes for lunch and at that time there is often a crowd of 40 or 50 people waiting for it to reopen. A lot of them have backpacks or sports bags containing all of their possessions. The worst off, who have already been robbed of everything, sometimes just have a black plastic garbage bag with a few items in it. They look scared and hungry, and you can see their eyes darting around, because you never know if the police are going to show up and cart them off. I don’t think that the neighborhood police would ever do such a thing, because they know the neighborhood and have quite a bit of empathy for the situation, but the people in charge know to send police from somewhere else with no understanding or any desire to understand the lives of these people. The government is always telling us that great precautions are being taken – the Afghan refugees are being redeposited only in safe parts of Afghanistan. What parts would those be?
Just before the rail overpass, the first of the telephone and internet centers appears. These are as common as the kebab places on the other street. Each one has a list of all of the developing countries in the eastern hemisphere and the rate per minute to call each country. They build little booths out of plywood, and each booth seems to be occupied at all times. Same for the internet stations with webcams. The local price used to be 1€ an hour, but I have noticed lately some signs saying 6€ for 5 hours. I find it hard to imagine ‘exile’ in the 21st century. I always thought of people escaping their country with extreme hardship (that doesn’t seem to have changed) and then losing touch with their family for 6 months, a year, two years – perhaps a letter every month or two for the most fortunate. Now it appears that many of them call home every day. I don’t know, but it seems to me like it would be more upsetting to the parents and other loved ones – hearing each day or at least several times a week the details of each failure, robbery, disappointment, false hope.
I cross over the train tracks of Gare du Nord and see a multitude of trains going north: the double-decker commuter trains to the northern suburbs, the maroon Thalys to Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne, the yellow Eurostars to London, the white TGVs to Lille, Calais and other northern cities, the older classic trains to Berlin and Moscow, the green trains to Picardy. It’s the busiest train station in Europe, full of busy people going to other busy places. Do the passengers sipping champagne in 1st class on the Eurostar know that they are passing under shivering refugees with no place to sleep?
After the bridge is the ‘official’ entry into the African part of Paris. There are countless sewing shops full of shiny fabrics and men hunched over sewing machines. It seems strange to me that husky men are making these frilly African dresses that are displayed with bouffant sleeves and frilly lace around the hems. But the women are looking after 5 or 8 children and cooking and washing all day, so it is work for men – the ladies have enough on their hands already.
There are some old Arab cafés along the way, where the retired Maghrebi workers spend their long days. They never thought that they would stay in France, but they don’t feel comfortable in their countries of origin anymore, and they would never see their children again if they went back permanently. When the ban on smoking was voted, I never imagined that these cafés would apply it, because I had only ever seen them with a cloud of smoke inside. And yet they seem very scrupulous, partly from fear of the French authorities and also just because they are used to respecting rules that other people make. A few will stand in front of the door with their short cigarettes of brown tobacco, ignoring the chill. These old men are so stoic.
After a final zigzag, I reach my mother’s nursing home, a big modern place with bars across the front. My mother called it the prison at the beginning, but now she seems to find it all normal. Inside, it is just as mixed as the neighborhood beyond the walls. If old French women comprise the majority of the residents, it is just because their families are not as large or as closely knit as many of the other ethnic groups. But there are some Asians, West Indians and Arabs as well, not to mention the personnel which is a whole ethnic cocktail unto itself. The African orderlies seem to have endless patience, while the Maghrebi ones are more matter of fact but make more of an effort with conversation, the French ones are usually the only ones who dare to scold their charges for real or imagined misdeeds… Yet a certain harmony seems to reign, just like in the rest of the neighborhood.
Taking this little trip every day, I can’t imagine living somewhere where everybody is the same.
I walk down the street, and there is an exotic touch almost immediately with the Istanbul Oriental grocery store. I have never been inside, but I can see just about everything the sell anyway because it has a completely open front, the better to entice its clientele. Displayed on the sidewalk are the invariable 2 liter bottles of multicolored Mirinda soda, the giant Senegalese cans of tuna, the Dutch Zwan ‘hallal luncheon meat’ (Spam), enormous bags of pistachios, peanuts, dates, almonds and the big square cartons of 30 eggs for 2.99€. All of this stuff must sell very well, because every single one of the shops of this type seem to display these same items in front, along with the 10 kilo bags of potatoes and onions. It really makes me wonder sometimes about the immigrant diet.
There is a normal bookstore (I have two nice bookstores within a block of my apartment, which is one of the indications that the neighborhood is not as poor as it sometimes looks), followed by African fashions and a place that promises ‘American-style’ fake fingernails, hair extensions, wigs, olive oil for hair care and other products to turn African women into spectacular creatures. It does not display the poster published by the Paris health authorities about the danger of skin lightening products, which is pretty much an admission that they sell these products.
There’s the little Chinese florist where I rarely buy anything, but I do every now and then, you never know. Tulips are cheap and plentiful at the moment, but I know that I can’t take any to my mother’s room, because the blossoms would be kissing the surface of the table by the next morning due to the heat. Then there are the Chinese jewelry stores, which seem to be frequented mostly young Maghrebi and African men in need of big golden necklaces and bracelets so that they can look like the guys on music videos.
Of course, every 20 meters there is also a kebab shop, formerly operated by Turks pretending to be Greek (‘sandwiches grecs’) but now mostly run by Indians pretending to be Maghrebi.
There’s the barber shop where I go; I guess I should call it a hairdresser considering the prices it charges. I used to have the same barber as the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, but Mr. Jeunet upgraded to another neighborhood after making Amélie, Alien Resurrection and A Very Long Engagement. Just as I reach the Monoprix with its Indian cashiers, I cross the street to change direction.
One of the first things on the new street is the headquarters of France Terre d’Asile, the refugee assistance center. Usually I pass it when it is already closed for the day, but the crowds are really amazing when I am there during the opening hours. There is always a big crowd of Afghans, Iraqis, Chinese, Somalis, Bangladeshis, sub-Saharan Africans and of course plenty of other unidentifiable nationalities. I can spot some South Americans sometimes, and also some Russians, Uzbecks and other former soviet sectors of Central Asia. Most of them are economic rather than political refugees and don’t have a rat’s chance in hell of getting residence papers. But the organization helps them to get medical treatment, temporary housing and meals, and I often see some of the young men (80% of them are young men) coming out with a little bag of toiletries – disposable razors, shaving cream, bars of soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes…
The place closes for lunch and at that time there is often a crowd of 40 or 50 people waiting for it to reopen. A lot of them have backpacks or sports bags containing all of their possessions. The worst off, who have already been robbed of everything, sometimes just have a black plastic garbage bag with a few items in it. They look scared and hungry, and you can see their eyes darting around, because you never know if the police are going to show up and cart them off. I don’t think that the neighborhood police would ever do such a thing, because they know the neighborhood and have quite a bit of empathy for the situation, but the people in charge know to send police from somewhere else with no understanding or any desire to understand the lives of these people. The government is always telling us that great precautions are being taken – the Afghan refugees are being redeposited only in safe parts of Afghanistan. What parts would those be?
Just before the rail overpass, the first of the telephone and internet centers appears. These are as common as the kebab places on the other street. Each one has a list of all of the developing countries in the eastern hemisphere and the rate per minute to call each country. They build little booths out of plywood, and each booth seems to be occupied at all times. Same for the internet stations with webcams. The local price used to be 1€ an hour, but I have noticed lately some signs saying 6€ for 5 hours. I find it hard to imagine ‘exile’ in the 21st century. I always thought of people escaping their country with extreme hardship (that doesn’t seem to have changed) and then losing touch with their family for 6 months, a year, two years – perhaps a letter every month or two for the most fortunate. Now it appears that many of them call home every day. I don’t know, but it seems to me like it would be more upsetting to the parents and other loved ones – hearing each day or at least several times a week the details of each failure, robbery, disappointment, false hope.
I cross over the train tracks of Gare du Nord and see a multitude of trains going north: the double-decker commuter trains to the northern suburbs, the maroon Thalys to Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne, the yellow Eurostars to London, the white TGVs to Lille, Calais and other northern cities, the older classic trains to Berlin and Moscow, the green trains to Picardy. It’s the busiest train station in Europe, full of busy people going to other busy places. Do the passengers sipping champagne in 1st class on the Eurostar know that they are passing under shivering refugees with no place to sleep?
After the bridge is the ‘official’ entry into the African part of Paris. There are countless sewing shops full of shiny fabrics and men hunched over sewing machines. It seems strange to me that husky men are making these frilly African dresses that are displayed with bouffant sleeves and frilly lace around the hems. But the women are looking after 5 or 8 children and cooking and washing all day, so it is work for men – the ladies have enough on their hands already.
There are some old Arab cafés along the way, where the retired Maghrebi workers spend their long days. They never thought that they would stay in France, but they don’t feel comfortable in their countries of origin anymore, and they would never see their children again if they went back permanently. When the ban on smoking was voted, I never imagined that these cafés would apply it, because I had only ever seen them with a cloud of smoke inside. And yet they seem very scrupulous, partly from fear of the French authorities and also just because they are used to respecting rules that other people make. A few will stand in front of the door with their short cigarettes of brown tobacco, ignoring the chill. These old men are so stoic.
After a final zigzag, I reach my mother’s nursing home, a big modern place with bars across the front. My mother called it the prison at the beginning, but now she seems to find it all normal. Inside, it is just as mixed as the neighborhood beyond the walls. If old French women comprise the majority of the residents, it is just because their families are not as large or as closely knit as many of the other ethnic groups. But there are some Asians, West Indians and Arabs as well, not to mention the personnel which is a whole ethnic cocktail unto itself. The African orderlies seem to have endless patience, while the Maghrebi ones are more matter of fact but make more of an effort with conversation, the French ones are usually the only ones who dare to scold their charges for real or imagined misdeeds… Yet a certain harmony seems to reign, just like in the rest of the neighborhood.
Taking this little trip every day, I can’t imagine living somewhere where everybody is the same.
