When you look at a guidebook on Paris and France, they don't tell you that Paris can be a shithole.
They don't tell you that behind the gilded, sparkling edifice of the Eiffel Tower, the money-green Prada counters of Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, the creamy yummy ooziness of a La Durée macaroon de pistache, the self indulgent architectural expanse of the Louvre, the story book quaintness of the cobbled streets of the Marais, and the raving bacchanalia that occurs in the bars of Bastille, lie stories and lives so poor, so excluded, so caked in shit it can actually make you sick.
I arrived in Paris in 2003, literally wrapped in cotton from dewy Cambridge, eagerly grasping this once in a lifetime chance to live-Paris-and-die. My professors sold me the dream and I swallowed it whole: I was lucky to be able to do a Maitrise in the best law university that topped even the Sorbonne. I was conveniently not told that the same establishment had a rich tradition of an extreme right wing student union which only recently had organised an attack on a couple of left wing students, burning them with cigarettes. I appreciated very much going to the only university in Paris with armed security.
My home was not a grand old apartment with a view overlooking the Seine as you saw in the last episode of Sex and the City (I did have views of amazing piles of dogshit) but a miniscule room in the College Franco Britannique of the Cite Universitaire. There I was taught my first lesson in segregation- we were housed by country of origin echoing the economic world order- the American House first with an outward facing view, the British College second and as life imitates art, the levels of amenities decreased as one went further and further down the GDP scale. No one wanted to live in the Maison de Cambodge. My first few months in this great city of culture and world class gastronomy were therefore not spent munching croissants aux amandes in continental cafés: they were spent having a 3 euro meal of greying beef and spaghetti at the CROUS (the student cafeteria), served by a few ethnic Albanians, quiet Algerians and bustling Cameroonians, all of whom had spilt dreams and washed out stories in a grand old building that smelt of bleach.
No one had told me before about Chateau' d'Eau and Strasbourg- St Denis, mere minutes from the Centre Georges Pompidou- these quartiers that would make Peckham look like West Hampstead and Flatbush look like 34th Street. Where a young girl named Aimée braids hair for less than 15 euros in a rotting building that houses six other "hair salons" and out of this sum pays for her chair, and for a tout who would congregate with the other crushing Senegalese, Ivoirian, Sierra Leonean bodies to accost and jostle and plead with you as you exit the middle passage of the metro station with shouts of "Tissages- Pas Cher (Cheap Weaves) and Ongles (Nails"). No one had had the gall to explain that a mere 10 minutes from Gare du Nord, on the way to Stade St Denis, I would find a crumbling banlieue rich only in the lies of ministers that it would all be addressed come the next election, a generation of youth whose unintelligible verlan dialect reflected their lack of assimilation and integration into mainstream French society. They don't tell you in the guidebooks that young Martiniquan boys in Clichy-sous-bois have never been to the Orsay or would never be able to point you to the Rodin museum; they hang out instead in "Chatelet", the underground monstrosity of a shopping centre in their new "baskets" (sneakers"). There, they eschew raclettes, confits de canard and fondues for buckets of greasy KFC. These boys from Douala and Pointe a Pierre live in Paris but dream of America.
Paris also has a serious case of Tourette's: it is uncomfortable and restless with itself and as a result, is frequently in an eruptive state. For starters, Paris is filled to the brim with the overeducated unemployed. Take my fellow graduate friend Thomas for instance, after having completed a Licence in law, his Maitrise, a DEA and a DESS (doctoral level studies), he struggles to find a job and is considering moving to Switzerland or to Brussels "Il n'y a rien ici" he mutters. France is perhaps the only country in the world where an education costs less than a plane ticket- 400 euros pays for a year's tuition - but perhaps the only country in the world where it is usual to work for free for 6 months at a time to obtain an elusive placement. Unemployment benefits can reach up to 60% of salary but nothing can compensate for the feeling that you have wasted your time. Those who are not unemployed strike. For just about anything. The SNCF can cripple Parisian society in one day.
Paris is also like a surly child - very suspicious of strangers. Arabs known also as "rabeurs" (Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians) were part of the first wave immigrants to reside near Paris in suburban congregations (cités). These cités have become completely lawless. The French government is notoriously apathetic- they openly say that to defend the law in these suburbs it futile and dangerous. A friend, Malik, complains that "the system favours French citizens with French sounding names and French physiognomy": he has no job and in a city that requires him to list his address and name in every job application and to attach a photo with his CV, he has resigned himself to the fact that he may never have one. The French principle of laicité (no privilege on the grounds of any affiliation) prevents any recognition of special rights and privileges based on minority status so the government remains distant, powerless and content to proclaim "liberté, egalité, fraternité".
Liberté, egalité, fraternité. Paris does not feel very fraternal to Claudine, whose parents (fully French, the Parisians boast) have travelled from the "perles" of France (les Antilles- the West Indies) to take low paying jobs in the Metropole. Her parents' contemporaries, who left France to settle in Martinique, are paid subsidies for the "inconvenience" of living in the Caribbean. The anger at such unequal treatment fueled the uprisings of February 2009 in Martinique and Guadeloupe. Martiniquais and Guadeloupians were furious that these “Bekes”, the descendants of the old French and the economic migrants to those islands retained a privileged status, and continued to economically exploit the indigenous minority through their monopoly over land and business. The islanders marched through the streets “Guadeloupe is ours, not theirs” they chanted. Even so, my friend from Gabon "sans papiers" (without papers), envies the Antillais. "Why are they complaining? At least they can work". Claudine slants her eyes "We are French. We are not black. We are mixed".
This méfiance of strangers is not confined to immigrants; Paris is suspicious of all foreigners who are not tourists. Tourists they can cope with- they are going back. To be fully French and resident means you can have it good- generous benefits, subsidised housing, free healthcare. An anglosaxon American is likely to face the same barriers as a South African, a Canadian, a Japanese national when trying to rent an apartment or opening a bank account- in Paris to be French is a specially reserved privilege.
Another not so well kept secret is that Paris a city of grandiose paper pushing bureaucracy. Like a decrepit old lady, it struggles to keep up with itself. Obtaining a carte de séjour, a task that should be a mere administrative formality, becomes almost like going to confession- a weekly monotonous visit to the Mairie or the Prefecture where one is reprimanded for not following the correct form. The beauty of Paris is ill reconciled with the city that can frustrate you when trying to open up a bank account, apply for a mortgage, or a credit card, in fact when you are trying to do anything remotely useful. France does leisure very well, too well. On the rare days that the banks are not closed for a two hour lunch break or there isn't a national strike, the sheer rudeness of the assistants can make you weep. This is the city where shop assistants will look in disdain at your shopping and tell you to put back the sweets because you would get fat, where a bank manager would clear your account and hand you back the cash when you request an overdraft, where you can wait up to one hour to post a single letter.
I was twenty and not feeling it. This was not the Paris where Thomas Jefferson lived with Sally Hemmings, where generations of intellectuals congregated to taste freedom -Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, James Baldwin, Richard Wright. This was supposed to be the Paris of the Grand Hotel on the Place de l'Opera where W.E.B. Dubois organised the first Pan African Congress in 1919 and the Paris I lived was not it.
I returned to France in 2008, nervously, for six months. I lived in that grand old apartment with a view overlooking the Seine, two metres away from the Atelier de Joel Robuchon (he trained Gordon Ramsey). I spent my evenings having crusty baguettes and St Marcellin and carafes of Beaujolais three steps from the Champs Elysees. I spent weekends in the champagne region and Saturday afternoons browsing the Louis Vuitton shop at Le Bon Marché. I called Thomas. He had found a job as an intellectual property lawyer. Malik was going back to Algeria. Claudine was doing a second Master 1. Aimée was in the same shop, still plaiting hair...
*Dedicated to the city I love to love and hate all at the same time*
