LETTER FROM PARIS #41 - I'll treasure memories

Three months in Paris does not make you an expert on the French. Even I am not that presumptuous. But I have tried to learn, to experience, and to understand that most mobile of behaviours: the French psyche. If I have succeeded, only you could say. Perhaps I have, if my friends (and exchangers) Michele and Henri are right. They have been the only available windows into the people here. It is to Henri perhaps, that I will owe a debt of gratitude. He believes my “letters” are well-written and worthy. He thinks they could be published by one of the Paris newspapers, since they are always looking for an outsider’s view. We’ll see.

Meanwhile. The stay goes on. Disappointments I have written about already – failure to “connect” with a local, and failure to improve (beyond marginally) my ability to understand the spoken word delivered at high speed, (My own spoken word has improved quite considerably.

Yesterday at lunch, a small eureka (!) a tiny ray of insight: our waiter spoke to us in perfect English. I have a response. I always say (in French) “When I visit here I want to speak only French. I can speak English every day at home.” It brings a smile and a shrug, sometimes almost patronizing. Except yesterday. If I had been listening more closely it wouldn’t have happened quite the way it did. The waiter slipped back into French. I asked him where he learned English. He lapsed back into a Dublin accent that I should have caught earlier. He has lived here for fifteen years and is quite obviously, more than an ex-pat, he is a Parisian. That seems to happen to people who move here. I am always reminded of another more famous Irishman, Samuel Becket who wrote “Waiting for Godot.” He preferred writing in French. Living in this country includes a kind of contagion. You so enjoy so much, from food to museums to how they exhibit sang-froid when crossing the road in traffic, that you want to join the fun. Would I rather be French? I don’t think so. But if I were to be truly accepted into this society, I could not maintain a kind of back-home anxiety. Which brings me to a subject I thought I should not discuss.

It is perhaps universal that certain kinds of immigrants have come to the country only for opportunity. We have it in Canada. They have it big time in France. There are millions here who not only do not assimilate into the culture that attracted them in the first place, but they include some very adamant people who rebel and deliberately stand outside French society, even to the extent that they want their own laws supercede French law. It is fine with me that they bring their cultures and habits, but that approval ends when they disrupt the society they so eagerly wanted into. (Am I making sense yet?) I have always been a supporter of multiculturalism, because it enriches the country; because it does not marginalize newcomers by being welcoming and being tolerant and understanding of their differences in style, language, and culture. The true multiculturalist can stand easily in two worlds. It should never be “either – or.”

But it should never be clinging to home country customs to the exclusion of the customs of their adopted country. When that country gives shelter and sustenance to newcomers, it should be rewarded with some kind of allegiance.

Sadly, France has been saddled with more than enough malcontents to go around. There are some who would say that in spite of their acceptance of strangers, the French will always b e xenophobic to some extent. That mistrust of strangers is heightened by reality: many are intractable nationalists who have brought unrelenting national and religious animosities into the culture they have chosen. They may never be French. Of course, the same could be said of that type of immigrant in many countries. Look what groups of them have done in Denmark, in Holland and in North America, where police continue to uncover conspiracy cells.

This is perhaps more political than I wanted to be. But it was the smiling Irishman who made it real. He is unashamedly Irish, and I think, very French. That just can’t happen in three months. I can only stand outside and look in and wonder.