Almost French (37 page)

In contrast with Australia where our multicultural society has become a source of pride, in France ‘multiculturalism’ is pretty much a dirty word. I’m not saying that Australia is a bastion of tolerance—racism can flare in any ethnically mixed society, causing it to fracture and even combust. But outwardly at least, many Australians champion diversity whereas the French cling stubbornly to the idea that theirs is a white nation. To me culture is fluid and constantly evolving. Yet in France—an old country with a strong sense of its own identity—culture is viewed as an established entity that must be preserved and protected from foreign influences.

As with any society, there is racism, although it’s different from racism in Australia. At dinner parties with educated, urbane Parisians I’ve been appalled by comments that just wouldn’t be permissible in the equivalent crowd in Sydney. ‘They were Arabs,
of course
’ said one friend-of-a-friend about a gang who’d robbed a service station. In the street, police regularly harass blacks and North Africans for their visas and papers whereas in all the time I’ve been here I haven’t been stopped once.

Having pondered the issue, though, I’ve come to the conclusion that the French are no more racist than any other people. Perhaps they’re just more upfront about it because there’s no culture of political correctness in this country. Besides, it’s also true that the French—far more readily than
Australians—will take to the streets in defence of principles, like the massive demonstrations that occurred in Paris when the previous government tried to introduce a system of ‘dobbing in’ illegal foreigners.

This heightened sense of responsibility stems partly from a heritage of defending human rights which dates back to the French Revolution. So the reality in France is multi-layered. Yes, I’ve heard many racial slurs here. Yet when Gallic cultivation is mixed with kindness and curiosity, the result is an enlightened worldview and an uncommon openness.

But compared to say America, England and Australia, immigrants in France are startingly absent from high-profile, public life. Despite the great wave of migration during the fifties and sixties, there are no North African or black news readers on television, for example. A French journalist who worked for one of the national networks told me a colleague of Algerian origin was ‘encouraged not to show his face in news reports’ because viewers wouldn’t like it. Perhaps, having worked in TV, I’m overestimating its power but I do think television should be a mirror of society. It seems to me vital that the children of immigrants see French people of their own ethnic origin presenting the news or other highly-watched programs so they feel accepted in mainstream society.

Youth anger and resentment is already rising. For one story I went to Montfermeil, a poor suburb east of Paris, to speak to young people, mostly children of migrants from northern and sub-Saharan Africa. I was stunned by the deep hatred they expressed for France, their country of birth. Their feeling that it had betrayed them. ‘When they needed people to do the hard jobs the French didn’t want they welcomed us,’ one twenty-year-old boy said, referring to how after the war France brought out North Africans to help rebuild
the country. ‘But as soon as things go badly they want us out.’

Bitter about their living conditions and job prospects, and often poorly educated, a minority resorts to violent crime which during my years in France has soared to record levels. In the grim suburbs surrounding many French towns, celebrations such as Bastille Day and New Year’s Eve turn into violent rampages as youth smash shop windows and torch cars. We’ve felt the impact of the crime leap too. At Les Halles, where gangs from the suburbs sell drugs and occasionally steal mobile phones and wallets from tourists, aggression simmers in the air. I’ve been spat at. A girlfriend of mine was punched in the eye in broad daylight. Many Parisians I know avoid the area altogether. The situation at Les Halles is confronting: it challenges your liberal beliefs. On one level I think the anger of these guys is justified. But then I don’t want it taken out on me. I’m as guilty as anyone of wanting a police crackdown, of wanting them shifted somewhere else, out of my backyard, so I can walk my dog in peace.

But the night of the World Cup victory, the streets pulsated with positive energy and the summer air was charged with feel-good vibes. When the photo of Zinedine Zidane, France’s two-goal hero who is a second-generation Algerian, was suddenly projected on the Arc de Triomphe, his image on the most pompous of Napoleonic monuments prompted a rush of goose bumps. It was hard to believe it was actually happening. At that moment I felt ridiculously proud; wholly French, suddenly part of this melting-pot nation. And although I know we’re talking about ninety minutes of soccer here, although with hindsight it’s easy to be circumspect, there’s no question that every one of us in the crowd felt this was a history-making moment. Nothing would be as it was before. France had entered a new era.

French Renaissance! French Revolution! French Recovery! Publications ranging from
Time
magazine to British
Vogue
trumpeted the transformation which by the middle of 2000 was confirmed by hard facts and figures. France
had
entered a new era. Although the problems in the suburbs didn’t disappear (in fact they were getting worse) a new dynamism and vigour were tangible. Unemployment in France was falling, the economy was surging, inefficient state-owned behemoths were being privatised at an unprecedented rate. Ambitious young entrepreneurs were showing new daring—and some of them were actually staying in their birthplace instead of fleeing to more business-friendly shores. Wary international analysts warned there were still serious sticking points: the country’s bloated public sector and the government’s plan to reduce the working week to 35 hours, which has been widely mocked in the market-driven English-speaking world. Even so, it was obvious to almost everyone that the Socialist government was doing a better job at running the country than its right-wing predecessors. Lionel Jospin—austere, Protestant and professorial—inspired confidence. The national mood swung from depression to optimism.

Sleeping Beauty woke from her slumber. Bars and new restaurants sprouted like spring grass across eastern Paris. Although a lot of the Left Bank remains gentrified, on the Right Bank previously unfashionable working-class neighbourhoods such as Belleville, Oberkampf and the canals of the 10th
arrondissement
now draw lively cosmopolitan crowds. The new self-confidence has also triggered less tangible changes which can only be supported by anecdotal evidence. The old insularity seemed to be giving way to a new openness. Visiting friends have said the capital seems friendlier. On their last trip, my parents observed that when their
French ran out, Parisians were more willing to try English than ever before.

Our
quartier
is changing, too.

The first sign that something is up occurs in our very own building. Walking down the stairs one day, I stumble into a blockade of sewing machines leaking oil onto the oak steps. The third-floor clothing sweat shop is moving to the heart of the Sentier where the owners won’t be bothered by live-in residents complaining about their noise. A few weeks later the garment maker on the second floor packs up too. For several months the apartments remain empty while the walls are repainted, the grubby carpets peeled back so the parquet floors can be sanded and polished. The new tenants obviously require smarter premises than their predecessors.

‘Silicon Sentier’. That’s the name coined by the French press to describe the influx of internet start-ups drawn to our
quartier
by the relatively low commercial rents and fast access provided by the network of fibre-optic cables which had been installed for the nearby stock exchange. Our new neighbours on the second and third floors of our building are ambitious, global-minded twenty-somethings who greet me in English even though they know I speak French. No more thumps from crashing fabric rolls, no more delivery men spitting on the stairs. Our concierge no longer has to sweep up cigarette butts and sequins.

The dot com crowd with their scooters and short shelf lives is hardly going to force out the Sentier seamstresses. But their arrival is part of a general smartening up that has swept much of the inner city. Everywhere you look buildings are shrouded in scaffolding, façades are being stripped of the cement which was once considered chic to reveal the lovely biscuity stone beneath. Run-down
hôtels particuliers
are
being restored and divided into sought-after apartments. Next to the fruit market, the modest Besançon hotel reopens as the stylish Hôtel Victoire Opéra, with mauve orchids quivering in the windows and pillowy velvet couches. Room prices don’t just go up, they double overnight and the hotel takes a flood of bookings from fashionable travellers.

Property prices have soared too, driving many long-time residents and businesses to sell up while the going is good. And each new departure creates another chink in the character of the
quartier
. Clothes are replacing food as the district’s chief commerce. Rue Etienne Marcel has become a stretch of designer fashion boutiques, each one glossier than the last. Gone is the pork wholesaler with hams and dried sausages swinging from the ceiling. In its place the Costes brothers (who own Hôtel Costes, Café Marly at the Louvre and Georges, the restaurant on top of the Pompidou Centre just to name a few) are planning a restaurant which will no doubt be another super-hip spot with apathetic waiters, where the interior design takes precedence over the food.

On Rue Montorgueil, one of the big fruit and vegetable shops has shut; the large butcher’s at the top of the street has been replaced by a shoe shop and a bland home design shop has opened, assuming its prime position with such authority that I can no longer recall what was there before it. Le Commerce, where I often used to go for my morning coffee, has been sold too. Although still a café, the new owners have polished up the bar and put candles on the tables and raised the price of a
café crème
from fourteen francs to twenty-two—a hike of about two dollars. The band of old-timers who used to spend the morning leaning on the bar with their beers have left in disgust, of course. This was the idea, apparently. ‘The new owners want a more chic clientele,’ whispers René
the barman, who misses the morning visits from his mates. He tells me they’ve dispersed to different cafés in the area.

The new proprietors aren’t spearheading change, they’re just trying to keep up with it. The fact is the regulars—the very people who make our
quartier
a real
quartier
—won’t be around for much longer. They’re all pensioners living in apartments they or their parents bought for next to nothing twenty or thirty years ago when the area was considered run-down and rough. And when they die they won’t be replaced by a younger working-class population. The rents are way too high.

A new law passed by France’s Socialist government in December 2000 requires every sizeable town to allocate at least twenty percent of its public housing to low-income earners or face penalty fines in the far future. By setting a minimum quota for rent-controlled flats, this regulation will obviously go some way towards maintaining a social diversity in cities. But in Paris, ‘social housing’ as it’s called is not spread evenly, it’s concentrated in the east, not in central districts like ours. Although the new mayor of the 2nd
arrondissement
—the only Green party mayor in Paris—is trying to create more, the loss of the
quartier
’s working-class character is a
fait accompli
.

Inner cities all over the world are becoming gentrified, I know—Frédéric and I are part of this change, after all. But prominent Parisians are now sounding the alarm: the centre of Paris risks losing its authenticity, its charm. The problem is not just the shifting population. Poor planning decisions by the authorities have exacerbated the situation, they say, pointing to the fact that the food market at Les Halles could have just been scaled down—or converted into a flower market—instead of moved out altogether. According to the radio broadcaster and writer, Philippe Meyer, Paris risks
ending up like Venice: a city so geared towards tourists that its soul has been destroyed.

Although not pessimistic, I believe Parisians are right to sound the alarm. The wondrous preservation of Paris—the palaces and buildings and old-fashioned shops—creates an impression of immutability. Yet the inner city has changed quite dramatically even in the few years since we bought our apartment. In many ways it has been improved. Change is vital, of course; it gives a city energy, a heartbeat—qualities that in retrospect were lacking when I moved here. But steps should be taken to ensure that it doesn’t come at the cost of character, that the entire inner city doesn’t become a glamorous, vacuous showcase. For centuries Rue Montorgueil has specialised in food and produce and it would be a terrible shame if that tradition is allowed to die. Virtually every time I pass, I check to see the horse meat shop is still there.
How long can it hold out
, I wonder? French people these days are more likely to indulge in fast food than a slice of horse. And what about the funny, dishevelled little boutiques which line the side streets of our
quartier
, the dated barbers’ shops and the Turkish tea rooms full of men who work in Sentier sweat shops? I might not frequent these places but I hope with all my heart they don’t disappear.

For a while it seemed as though even the rats had packed up in protest at the gentrification of their stamping ground. Curiously, they have never repeated their audacious, all-ensemble appearance on our front doorstop which so horrified me that night we moved in our first belongings. It was, it seems, an impeccably timed one-off performance orchestrated for maximum shock and effect. Then, one night last year, we saw them again: six or seven huge rats gorging on something in the gutter. The sight of them was oddly
heartening. The rats are not ready to relinquish the belly of Paris yet.