N’importe nawak

Some random memories from my recent visit to Paris:

• The high, fluty voice of a waitress. It’s a voice you often hear in France and never in the US. It sounds a bit like the one Monty Python used when they dressed up as housewives.
• A young woman dressed in black, full-body hijab at a Metro station. She is crouched on the side of the steps. Her wrist rests upon her knee, her palm is cupped open. Her dress and posture suggest a religious act: is she begging or is she asking for alms? I see several identically dressed women on the steps of different stations. Who are they? I imagine them the female arm of a terrorist group. To hold out your hand while hundreds hurry by, hour after hour, to suffer so much indifference might turn anyone into a terrorist. I recall the anger and contempt I sometimes felt hitchhiking, when I couldn’t get a ride.
• The indescribable aroma of the stairwell leading to the apartment I rented. A mixture of who knows what. Garbage, turpentine, mold, dust, old cheese. The stairs are painted with an ancient glossy black lacquer, long since worn down to bare wood and hollowed out in the center.
• The andouillette I ordered. Somehow, I thought I was ordering eel (anguille). The waitress looked at me sharply. “Vous avez déjà mangé andouillette ?” she asked. [Have you already eaten andouillette?] Sure, I said, but not recently. I thought that was a pretty good hedge. Who remembers every dish they’ve ever had? It was entirely possible I was telling the truth. Even when the bloated sausage arrived, swimming in lentils and smelling like manure, I still thought I might be looking at anguille. I cut into the sausage tube and unfolded whatever it was that was inside. Pig tripe, I later learned. Not bad really. But why that smell?
• A black radish the size of a potato. My mother’s neighbor pulled it out of his garden for me. He pulled out another one and cut it open to show me how to peel it: not just the skin, but the whole outer layer, a few centimeters thick. The white flesh tastes just like any other radish. (OK, so this actually took place in Normandy, not Paris, but it was part of the same trip.)
• The waiter who mocked me at the Jardin du Luxembourg. I ordered a bottle of mineral water and wanted to know how big it was. “Quelle taille?” I ask. “What size?” the waiter instantly and sarcastically translates into English. And then in French he says, “Oh, 42, peut-être 43,” gesturing with his hand as if to measure his torso. I get it. I have used the wrong word. “Taille” can be translated as “size” in lots of contexts, notably for clothing, but doesn’t apply to bottles. He doesn’t tell me the right word, and I don’t leave a tip.
• The taxi-driver of North African origin who harangued me about the CIA’s obvious responsibility for the 9/11 attacks as well as JFK’s assassination. It turns out a lot of people in France believe this. Earlier this year when Marian Cotillard won an Oscar for playing Edith Piaf in La Môme, there was some embarrassment when it was discovered she had proposed the same theory on a late-night radio program. Just a couple of weeks ago, the comedian Jean-Marie Bigard, a good friend of Nicholas Sarkozy, made the news when he made the same claim. They were talking about it on the radio when I got in the cab, making fun of Bigard’s ignorance, but the taxi-driver didn’t seem to hear that.
• The small group of sans-papiers standing outside a building they are occupying, a union hall near Place de la République (sans-papiers: literally, without papers; I think they would be called undocumented aliens in the US). Some 600 of them have been occupying the building since May 2. According to an article in Libération (here), “Living conditions are severe. One meal a day, no shower, and only a few toilets.” (“Les conditions de vie sont drastiques, un repas par jour, pas de douche et seulement quelques toilettes.”) . They are right on the edge of the Marais district, one of the most fashionable areas of Paris, on the same street and about 100 meters away from the apartment I rented two years ago.