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.
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