There is a dark side to Paris. It is everywhere, if one looks for it.
Le Metro has impressive acoustics. It is easy to blog about the instrumentalist in the Metro tunnel, playing old French tunes, hoping for some loose change. But the tiled caverns are equally efficient at echoing the wails of the homeless Muslim woman, forehead pressed against the cold stone floor, begging for coins. “J’ai faime.” I am hungry. It is hard to just keep walking, but caught up in the sea of people, it is remarkably easy to do. There is comfort in numbers.
The social safety nets in France are vast and French citizens are rarely homeless. The French mentally ill are rarely seen wandering the streets. However, the étrangers (literally “strangers” but what we Americans refer to as foreigners or immigrants) are not entitled to the protection of these French laws. A foreign Muslim woman, abandoned by her husband, has nothing. My heart goes out, but my feet keep moving. And I ask myself again – why is it easier to toss a coin into the violin case of a young smiling vagabond, backpacking through Europe, than into the ragged paper cup of a woman whose eyes I will never meet?
“Ou sont les neiges?” Where are my dreams of yesteryear, dreams of saving the world?
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