Sunday 29 January 2017

Paris Bulletin no. 1 2017



7 January 8.45 am. Helping at le Café Solidaire on the Place Pajol
The thermos is full of hot tea, the baguettes are chopped into pieces and spread with chocolate. Four refugees approach, only one out of the four is wearing gloves. None of them has hats. It is minus 3 degrees Celsius.
‘Tea? Chai?’ A nod. ‘Sugar?’ Another nod, three fingers held up. ‘Bread with chocolate?’ ‘Yes, thank you.’ He takes the plastic cup and bread and a packet of paper hankies, goes and squats by the wall. Paper hankies, maps of the city, maps of the metro, bananas, boiled eggs and yoghurt if they can get them. 

The line gets longer. There’s no more chocolate spread, but down in the bottom of the chariot there’s a pot of honey a well-wisher has given.
‘Honey?’ I point to the label. The boy nods, smiles. ‘How do you say honey in…?’ He’s Eritrean, what language does he speak? Of course, Amharic.
‘Mari’ he says. ‘Me mari.’ He points to his chest and grins. I get the joke.
‘Good, me ‘honey’,’ I reply.
‘Sweet,’ he says. And so it is.
**
A day later and I am there again. I talk to Rachel. Her face is twisted with anxiety. She arrived in Paris with her daughter, Aden aged 4, two days ago.
‘I came across the sea from Libya, in a boat, very full. I was afraid.’ Rachel is a widow. Her husband died when Aden was ten months old – ‘not killed,’ she adds quickly. ‘A natural death but he was young. Too young.’
Both her parents died too. She has left no family in Eritrea but she has no relatives to turn to in Paris either. Still she didn’t hesitate. ‘In my country life is brutal.’ She says it with conviction. I ask her where she learnt the word. 'I had to speak English in Lebanon where I worked before my daughter was born. I was a waitress.' 
Last night she slept in a hotel but she doesn’t know where she’ll be tonight. ‘Perhaps with them,’ she says, gesturing at a group of young men who are rolling up their sleeping bags.
‘What do you want now you are here?’ I ask.
‘For me, nothing. For my daughter, everything. To learn ... to read ... to go to school.’
‘You must want something for you too?’
‘A safe place to sleep. To make a meal. To feed my daughter.’

27 January 8.35 am. Waiting to go as an accompanying parent on a school trip to the Pavillon de l’Arsenal
From where I am standing in the entrance to the school I can see what’s happening on the other side of the street. There’s a pile of duvets, blankets and sleeping bags on the pavement. 

They are hiding a group of young Eritrean refugees. It’s not as cold today as it has been for the past fortnight but they’re in no hurry to emerge, and who could blame them? They have the warmth of each other as well as the covers. Unfortunately for them the police are here in numbers, strutting about, all set to clear them off.  Several of the young men are already on their feet, hurriedly pushing their shoes on, grabbing their bags. We know by now what happens to anything they can’t carry because we’ve seen it many times before: duvets and sleeping bags, no matter their state, will be scooped up and tossed into one of those huge waste bins or straight into a rubbish van. This time at least we’re spared the cleaners in their full-body white overalls with their high-pressure hoses at the ready. It’s something to see someone’s only warm cover reduced to a sopping heap by a jet of cold water. ‘Nettoyage,’ they say. They don’t add the word ‘ethnique’ but they might as well. The school janitor is watching too.
‘Ils les embarquent. Ils les mènent au commissariat, Une fois là-bas ils les relâchent. C’est un recyclage perpetuel. C’est complètement con.’
10.30 am. 29 January I am in the commissariat on the rue de la Goutte d’Or to report the theft of my wallet
            A young woman appears in the lobby between the outer and the inner doors. She  can’t see how to open the door. I help her. She is distraught. The station is already busy. The officer on duty asks her why she’s there and she collapses.
C’est mon voisin. Il me dit ‘sale juive’ tout le temps.’ By now she’s crying so hard it’s impossible to make out the rest.
‘Calmez-vous, madame et asseyez-vous. On va s’occuper de vous.’
**
            I am one of the lucky ones:  the events I’ve described are a small part of my life. In between I have been to the cinema twice, to see Paterson and Toni Erdmann, to the theatre once, to see Jacques Gamblin and a jazz group, to the Louvre twice, once to visit the Collection Tessin and the second time to do some drawing and to the Pompidou to catch the Magritte before it closed. I have eaten good food with friends, drunk lots of cups of coffee and one or two glasses of wine, bought a couple of things I didn’t really need in the sales, made eight pots of marmalade, knitted four pussy hats and marched with thousands of men and women from Trocadéro to the Champs de Mars. And I’ve been in and out of various bookshops:














There are over 350 independent bookshops in Paris and 75 municipally-funded lending libraries. What wealth! And what better to way to end the first bulletin of the year?

             ‘To learn … to read … to go to school.’ Not for the first time it’s a refugee who reminds us of what really matters.