Paris bulletin 1 2015

A bright morning in mid-February and I set out, up the hill from the flat to my branch of the Société Générale on the boulevard Barbès. I am hopeful that today I will manage to close my account there. Like the act itself, the verb I need is nothing so simple as fermer. I learn from the dark-suited, unsmiling  conseillère behind the desk that what I want to do is either  clôturer mon compte ou – mieux encore - le résilier. So there you have it. It’s taken me two visits so far. Third time lucky or, j’espère que la troisième fois sera la bonne, which is nothing like as neat a phrase in French as it is in English.

I’ve been back in Paris a matter of a few weeks since my long annual trip to California. And in between I’ve been in the air again, the second time to Andalucia where the vegetation and the architecture is so strongly reminiscent of southern California it’s positively disorientating. Except that you don’t have men shepherding flocks of goats over the hills in So Cal – or not that I’ve seen – and, like so much else in that rich state, the orange trees are privately owned, not planted by the municipality to shade the streets.

Now here I am on my own turf again, more than a month after the hideous, nation-shaking events of 7^th January. What has changed? In some ways superficially not much. There are many more armed soldiers patrolling the stations and standing outside ‘sensitive venues’ but the gare du Nord which is the station I go through most often, has always had its quota of camouflage-clad men carrying sub-machine guns.

Today I pass a posse of police at the square Léon. They’ve erupted from a car and are patting down a couple of black guys, arms raised against the wall. By the time I’ve got to the far end of the garden they’re back in their cars and the boys are free to go, though where to when you’ve got nothing to do and no money to do it with is another question altogether.

I see that the police station in the Goutte d’Or is now barricaded off, so pedestrians like me have to step out into the street to go by. The two women officers standing guard outside are armed with more than their customary pistols. So much for building closer links with the community – from the other side of a metal fence is all.

On the radio it’s a different matter. There the ‘issues’ raised by Charlie - la laïcité, l’exclusion sociale, l’antisémitisme, l’Islam intégriste – all those and more are constant and recurring points of debate and conversation. And when I go into the 19^th arrondissement where there is a sizeable Haredi Jewish community, I see pairs of soldiers, outside the kosher shops, some of the primary schools and, signalling by their presence, the unmarked entrances to synagogues.

There’s no one guarding the mosques round here though and not a sign of a uniform or a gun outside the Institut des Cultures d’Islam on the rue Stephenson. The door swings open freely to anyone who cares to enter. Once I’ve successfully closed my account that’s where I’m headed.

I want to have a look at the exhibition, ‘Cherchez l’Erreur’, a series of photographs by six women artists: Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Gohar Dashti, Shadi Ghadirian, Tanya Habjouqa, Nermine Hammam, Raeda Saedeh - and a torrent of a poem, ‘We Teach Life, Sir’ by Rafeef Ziadah, shown on a small video screen on the second floor.

I am not disappointed and neither, I think, would you be if you could go. The exhibition is on until 19th April so try to see it if you are in Paris. Why? Because the photos are good in their own right, and because they tell a different story from the dominant one of the present. They tell a story women in the Middle East are perhaps best placed of all to tell: of the way in which war and displacement have wormed their way into the fabric of everyday life in that region of the world, of the distortions of the media accounts of these wars – because for now there are many, even though they may all merge into one, and show more and more signs of doing so.

There is irony, dark humour and a dogged determination to survive, to hold on, in the images. All the complexity of that region’s cultural, political, civilisational challenges is contained in a few frames: the situation of women, how one lives a meaningful  life in the desperate confinement of the ruins of Gaza,  the disastrous interventions of the US and its western allies, the failure of the so-called Arab springs and underpinning it all, and doing very nicely thank you, the death-delivering global arms industry.

Occupied Pleasures Tanya Habjouqa 

 

 

 

Penelope - Raeda Saadah

 

Nil Nil - Shadi Ghadrian (and below)

 

 

So where does 'Je suis Charlie' fit in all of this? In the fact of the exhibition itself - that these women can show their work in a publicly-funded building with no fear of the consequences for themselves or their families. A priceless asset in the times we live in.