Paris bulletin 5 2015

Once July comes, once the schools have closed and those who can, have set off for other greener, bluer spaces, the city takes on a different feel, not empty but slightly hollowed out. Needless to say not around la Chapelle metro where the pavements are as busy as ever and there are as many trays of coriander, mint and garlic as usual; the same for the displays of belts, shoes and things to plug in your ears so you can blot out the noise of the street with a noise you’ve chosen for yourself.

Silence is not the order of the day - or the night. You keep your windows open when it’s as hot as it has been throughout the month, so you come awake at two in the morning most nights and wonder why the Pompiers or the Urgences need to sound their sirens when the street are bare of traffic. And then you drift off again, having stood at the window for a little while to feel the breathless night air and see if there’s any sign of a star in the half-dark sky.

The days start with the manful brushing and spraying of the pavements by the valiant army of plastic brush- and, long-handled shovel-wielders in their green uniforms. Long before most people are out of bed they’ve made sure yesterday’s detritus has been swept up to leave space for today’s.

The sun comes up and the smells change in the heat. From around mid-morning until late at night you will be assailed by mini-bouffées of marijuana, the passing stench of piss where some man has peed into a corner, ignoring the toilettes publiques only twenty yards further on, the metallically wet smell of deep water in the canal, the occasional deliriously sweet waft of lime blossom from high overhead. And underneath this olfactory cocktail the ever-present oiliness of diesel and petrol fumes like a heavy base beat.

Catch a late metro and you can always be surprised by who and what comes out at night: a youth stoned out of his mind collapses through the door and is grabbed by his girl-friend just before he topples back out onto the platform and loses her for the remainder of the  night, if not forever. There are the bare-foot and the mildly mad, the tattooed and the badly burnt, the latter practically always speaking English – loudly - while casting anxious glances at the map of the stations over the door, as if they fear the train may hop the tracks and carry them off to who knows where.

And at the bassin de la Villette, all ages Paris is outside playing hard. From the 20 July till 23 August here in the north of the city, Paris Plages 2015 is inviting you to make sand-castles, ride the manège, pilot a boat, read a BD, play table football, lark about under a cooling spray or relax under an awning and enjoy a cool drink and a burger, and, if you have the nerve and are not too big and ungainly, climb the perpendicular ladder to the platforms 20-plus metres above the earth and launch yourself off on  the high zip wire that straddles the canal in both directions.

 

Paris Plages 2015

 

How does Paris at play look to the young men lying around on mattresses on the Esplanade Nathalie Sarraute or sitting  in small groups under the trees in the jardin d’Eole doing their daily French lessons? Unbelievable, in every way, I’d guess: riotously rich and privileged – and safe, despite the predations of les forces de l’ordre (which seem to have pulled back for now).

French lessons en plein air in le jardin d

 

washing and tents out on the line

 

mountains of mattresses, piled up while the cleaning lorry does a round

                                                    the library's new neighbours

The weather has been kind to anyone who has to sleep outside. July has been exceptionally dry so there have only been a couple of times when volunteers have rushed to cover bedding and mattress with tarpaulins. Clothes dry on the lines strung between the lamp-posts; the mattresses have been supplemented by old sofas and chairs; the canteen is well-provisioned and orderly and not all the immigration experts and lawyers have left to spend their summer in the country.

We know, and the migrants know even better, it’s not ‘for ever’ but what a pleasure, as one Sudanese boy said to me, in English, to sleep on a mattress with your own cover over you, stretched out your full length on a Paris pavement instead of curled in the corner of a stinking, airless, overheated, overloaded lorry.

When they go others will take their place, wave upon wave of them, young and old, men and women, some to stay and many more to go on northwards.

Le monde en mouvement. Like a vast pot being stirred, the slow and clumsy mixing and blending of populations. And every molecule of that mix a single, unique life.