Paris is burning! Smouldering Renaults and Citroëns litter the streets! The Sorbonne has been demolished! The reports of chaos are all the more alarming as they don’t come from the US Consulate — nor from France 2 or Le Monde or France-Soir (which is on strike). Not from CNN or the online New York Times or the International Herald Tribune, either. The alarums come from my parents, phoning at length on unlimited international calling, then from friends via email.
It’s embarrassing having less to report than my stateside sources. Even my parents are disappointed by my anticlimactic testimony. No, I have not been hurt, nor seen anything. My children haven’t been endangered. I explain that the media has a way of blowing up specks of trouble into whirling sandstorms of turmoil. Moreover, Paris is a large metropolis, so that a crisis in one area doesn’t necessarily register in another arrondissement. And demographically speaking, my stomping grounds don’t coincide with those of Génération Anti-This-or-That.
There are near misses. One category of these is Wrong Place. A colleague at the Institute informs me that a melee has occurred on the Invalides Esplanade in front of our building. Cars burned, tear gas canisters lobbed, CRS riot police truncheons swung. Worst of all, demonstrators assaulted other demonstrators — not out of racial hatred, or class hatred, or even political one-upmanship, but for their cellphones. I’m not working there that day, so I miss this revolutionary action.
Then there’s Wrong Time: I walk my children up the Cours de Vincennes to the Printemps department store. My daughter has insisted on finding (i.e. buying) a beret. Given the revolt in the air I think of Che, Huey Newton in his bamboo chair, or at least Tania Hearst. My daughter hasn’t heard of any of them. On the way to the Place de la Nation we weave through riot squad buses, police vans, unmarked cop cars. Crowds of riot police mill menacingly. I thrill at the idea of trouble, but there is none. The processions which historically begin at Place de la République end at Place de la Nation, where scores were guillotined (talk about preaching to the converted). But either the demonstrators have already come and gone, or are not there yet. (We find a beret, but it isn’t the right brand.)
If I’m going to find trouble I’ll have to look for it. I go a-looking, and I’m not disappointed. During this period a working-class Jewish boy was kidnapped, tortured and savagely killed by working-class youths of mixed background. The gang called itself the Barbarians, and the French media relished shouting this epithet over and over: les Barbares! The perpetrators are caught, but this isn’t enough. This is Paris, and so a demonstration is called, to denounce racism and anti-Semitism and to foster tolerance. This is yet another march that ends up at Nation. I head there in time to catch the tail end.
Some folks (young and male, as always) don’t appreciate the demonstration, and so blare Middle Eastern music out of their car stereos. I witness a fight between Jewish kids and Arab kids. Bitter words, fisticuffs, a police car screaming by. Politicians, the media and NGOs consider the march a great event. So what’s with these kids? As I walk by I pass two Arab boys chattering in an agitated manner. Dark-skinned, black-haired, sloe-eyed, speaking in guttural accents. But, wait a minute — is one of them wearing a yarmulke?
Not long after that, there’s a commotion at my local post office. Normally, at closing time the employees have a hard time keeping latecomers out. As I’m returning home one evening, they’re keeping somebody in. I never do figure out why. But friends and family of the man are banging and kicking at the door, trying to get him back out. The police come and handle the situation in what seems a heavy-handed way.
Some of the police go inside to deal with the troublemaker. Tear gas soon wafts out to assault the eyes and noses of us ogling bystanders. A woman — spouse or partner of the man inside — begins shrieking and trying to enter. The stress roiling the forces d’ordre these past weeks shoots to the surface with a fury. The two police officers outside happen to be a black man and a white man, and I bear witness to these brothers in arms transcending their racial differences, joining under pressure and helping one another to beat up a small woman. That isn’t what irks me, though.
A little old man, who I recognize as the neighbourhood bum, or clochard, goes up to the police and screams at them to cease and desist. When they tell him to shut up and mind his own business he redoubles his screaming, proclaiming that he’s a citoyen. The police don’t touch him, out of pity or distaste. I admire the clochard for his guts. Admire him, but am royally irked. As I go home, I’m burning up at not being part of the action.
Just inside my building I come across an armchair. It’s been sitting there for a week. One of my neighbours hasn’t been able to make up his mind whether to keep it, give it away, or throw it out. So the residents are compelled to walk around the overstuffed monster. Now, without thinking, I take hold of the fauteuil and drag it onto the sidewalk. I take out my keys, and wielding them like razor-sharp stilettos, I slash the pompous upholstery. If that isn’t enough, I plan to set fire to the thing. But I don’t smoke; ergo I have neither lighter nor matches. In a wild, uncontrollable rage I flip its damask cushion onto the pavement.
Finally feeling justified, I enter my apartment. I feel slight unease at being found out, but the next day the incriminating evidence has disappeared. Have the Ville de Paris men in green lived up to their chanted slogans about le service public? Or was it the private sector, in the form of Paris’s intrepid junk collectors, who’ve done their vulture-like duty, picking the sidewalk clean? In any case, all traces of my own private French riot are gone.
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