One more experience in France, at this time in
Paris. Unusual experience.
As we like to visit parts of the city that are
revealing of realities not easily available for tourists, we decided to
adventure by the “outskirt”. How? We found out that it would be necessary to
take a RER line. At first we thought that it was a bus line. How to find where it went by? We looked at the maps hanging at the bus
stops, none of them mentioned RER. After searching for a long time, we finally
found it! It was a special subway line. And it left from Chatelet station. But,
it wasn’t that simple. Many lines go through this station, and such RER had the
stop very far and way below from the well known ones. I admit it was a bit
scary going through many and long corridors, taking an elevator (Up? Down?
Don’t even know anymore), walk a little more and only then…realize what a RER
was: a huge double deck train, painted in the colors of France: red, blue and
white. And it isn’t as frequent as the “normal” ones.
We were about
20 minutes at the station waiting for the departure. I immediately noticed that
all the people who were also waiting for the train were black. Hum…How
peculiar! Where were we? Which city is this? We left towards the station which
we had bought tickets for. Finally the train departed and from then on my
surprise with the blackness of the passengers was increasing. In every
following station, black people would come in and get out, dressed in a very
simple way, as it happens with poor people anywhere in the world. Only about 5%
of white people. In the area where the train ran on the surface the landscape
wasn’t too interesting. The fantasy that we would see theSeine River and
would get to know a special architecture of the city didn’t happen. We decided
to get out of the train earlier than planned. And my astonishment went on: a
clear impression that I was in an African country. Simple houses, few and poor
commerce near the train station. We went for a walk around the neighborhood,
few people circulating. We got very hungry and entered in a small and humble
restaurant that could call itself Turkey- Greek. The young woman who served us
was a caring and nice Moroccan; ready to help us choose what to eat.
I don’t have
deep reflections to propose I only wanted to tell how a simple search for
different experiences could reveal little known aspects of a well-visited city
such as Paris. There were still some questions: How the sharp separation
between black and white people takes its toll on the “standard” Parisians? How
the black people would describe their lives in Paris? Yes, there were
rebellions in Belleville in 2005. Do they indicate what the people of the
numberless neighborhood live? I didn’t notice a hostile or arrogant way, an
attitude of self-assertion that I sometimes saw in New York or Washington. No,
they seemed to be “ordinary” people…in an African country. Why little is said
about this split up of the city’s population, about its habits, its houses and
the job it has?
I believe that these questions occur to me because
I live in a city where black people and poor people mix together with white
people (even if not so white) and “rich people” (not so rich): Rio de Janeiro.
I don’t seek for comparisons, they are never worthwhile. It was just another
experience of the enormous diversity of people and places that exist around the
world. And the uselessness and emptiness of affirming the superiority of some
over others, using spurious criteria.
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