Into The Night

The sun is setting in the sky and my work here must be done. I gingerly put away all the materials I’ve used and set the alarm on the office. I take the elevator down to the private landing below and slip into the night. Freedom.

The air is fresh and the good citizens of the 7Th Quartier are walking just a little bit slower, talking just a little less hurried. They meander around as if in search for that one great cafe that they went to that one time with their friend while shopping for wedding shoes. I wish I had time to partake. I have to get home.There are dogs to be taken out, there is The Daily Show to catch up on, and if I could just get 20 minutes to watch Jon Stewart talk and eat my spaghetti bolognese very slowly, I’d go to bed happy.

The Réseau Express Régional, otherwise known as the RER station, looms before me. These are trains that take the daily workers to and from their homes outside Paris proper. They stop in the suburbs and carry on further still into the countryside. The RER-E will be what takes me home tonight. The RER-E has a special place in French society.

It is the train of Brown Folk, it is the train of the ghetto, it is the train that will take you to that place where those riots happened, once upon a time.

You step on and 90% of us are Algerians, Lebanese, Ghanaian, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Pakistani, Indian and Others. The ethnic French, that is to say, the people that will never be asked, “Where are you from?”, crowd in next to us all. If they are taking the RER-E they are usually well integrated into not-white culture. They don’t shrink, or get scared or get up and move seats when one of us sits down next to them. Something I’ve seen on inter-Paris metros more than once.

The train rattles to life and whines out of the station. One quick stop in Gare du Nord and then it’s out of the city for the night.

 The graffiti scratched into the windows mars my vision of the passing graffiti painted on walls. I focus instead on the scratches themselves. I have to stare at something after all. Staring at humans was out of the question. Where we were headed, the 93rd, people didn’t automatically assume good intent from strangers.
And so we all gaze aimlessly. We find a spot with our eyes and we stick them there. Our stone faces reverting into tombstones. We become monolithic, unmoving, inhuman blocks that just want to keep to ourselves until the next stop. One glance can bring harassment. One glance up and a man is asking me for a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke.”

“Your number then.” I wave him off as if to say that he shouldn’t bother. He moves on. I sigh a relief. All he has to do is follow me off the train. It’s happened before.

I have a friend, Wafa, who doesn’t really accept the place society gives her. She has a certain amount of privilege as her father is a fairly wealthy Français-Moroccan. Even with the money he stays in the 93rd. The 93rd, the neuf-trois as it is colloquially called, creates much trepidation to outsiders. But her father refuses to budge.

Wafa is impeccable in her dress, polite, well read,  and known for making friend’s wherever she goes. From the sales ladies at Gucci to the souvinier hawkers sporting mini-Eiffel Towers, she’s always up for a chat. She will help anybody if they come up and ask her for directions and she is quick to point out unacceptable behavior as such. But even her face turns inward when she takes the RER by herself. When we’re together we are laughing. We’re a group. We’re safe together and will giggle all the way to Gare du Nord. But alone? There are no longer jokes to make. We turn to marble.

The Tram meets up with me at my station. It takes me further into the 93rd and drops me off two minutes from my house. I usually feel safe walking from the station. I just wish they hadn’t opened two bars nearby. In my area, bars aren’t the corner and neighborhood place where you can go and get to know your bartender. The bars here are for the dredges of society who insist on shooting whiskey from 1pm to 6pm. After which they stumbled down my street pissing in corners and I’m supposed to ignore them while I’m walking by and all I want is the spaghetti bolognese so I will pick up my pace.

I tap the code into my gate and enter my apartment grounds. My shoulders fall, my face softens and I can finally relax. My upstairs neighbor is outside. I greet her. She’s a lovely woman. A Jewish widow who invites me up to give her English lessons that often devolve into gossip. The man below me is an old retiered Air France pilot who refuses to tell me scary stories. He’s 85 and has terribly old fashioned notions about worrying the “ladies”. He thinks I’ll never fly again if he tells me such things, he might be right.

I say hello to the Armenian single mother who lives next door, she’s painting her hallway a pale yellow and her front door is wide open. “How’s it getting along?” I ask.
“It’s good, I like the color, do you?”
“It’s very calming.”
“Bouchera wants to see your hallway.” Bouchera is our Moroccan neighbor who just had a child. She heard a rumor that I painted my hallway bright green. That rumor is true. I also painted my living room bright yellow after deciding I wanted my house to resemble Havana avant Castro.

I hear her child, “Amara!” I call, “come give me kisses. What are you waiting for?” The seven year old comes bursting out around her mother. She is all eyelashes and olive skin. “Can I see Elliot?” she asks, kissing me on the cheeks. I let my dog out and the little girl and my hyper puppy jump around together on our floor.
“Okay, good night, see you later!” I finally call as my stomach is growling and it’s time to eat some serious food.

I prepare my dinner, buffer The Daily Show and watch feeling perfectly content. But that night I cannot help but wonder about the other tombstones. What has become of them? Have they come back to nice apartment buildings full of friendly neighbors? Have they returned to the projects crawling with drug dealers? Did they go home to abuse? To a loving husband? To an empty home? To their own dog? Where do these monoliths go when they regain their human form? What tapestry of the city will they fill out? What assumptions have I made based on nothing more than façade. What does it take to break it down to a human level? In a world of stone faces, perhaps there is bravery in cracking up.

Or perhaps to keep our humanity it is imperative we do not think about the toes we will be stepping on. I fall asleep reminded of that old nursery rhyme and slowly the words morph in my mind until the chorus sings: Masses, masses, we all fall down.