Hungry Woman in Paris

by Josefina López

  “We resell the bags for more, many in private boutiques in Japan and China. They are afraid we will make fake ones exactly like these new models,” she confessed. It was none of my business, but I had to ask.

  “Will you copy them?”

  “Of course. How else can the regular woman afford these?” she admitted, and I nodded. She appreciated that I was so calm and hired me a couple more times. You might be wondering why, if I am a fighter for justice like I keep claiming to be, I could participate in this. Simple: it should be illegal to pay more than a hundred dollars for a handbag.

  Hiromi liked me so much she had me do shopping runs twice a week and she grew to trust me. After each shopping spree I would meet her at Bistro Romain, across the street from the store. She would buy me lunch and we’d pretend to be friends and then she’d leave with the gigantic brown shopping bags with the LV emblem.

  One day while working on an order I approached a counter where a Muslim woman covered by an ivory silk veil was crying. I didn’t realize she was crying until I saw her digging into her large Chanel purse. I opened my purse and handed her a tissue. She smiled at me and took the tissue. She looked around and saw that the other Muslim women, perhaps the other wives of the same sheikh, were busy getting their bodyguard to get them assistance. The bodyguard followed after an LV saleswoman and was out of sight. She turned to me and said in a low whisper what I could barely make out to be “Help me.” I looked at her, not sure what she meant. She said it again with more urgency: “Help me.”

  “Help you? How?” I asked, but she did not understand or speak English. She just repeated “Help me” as though it was something memorized from a travel guide.

  She turned to see if her bodyguard was still away. He returned, but he was far enough away that he couldn’t see her easily. “Help me,” she begged me quietly. I looked at her and nodded slightly. Then I committed the cardinal sin at LV and reached over and grabbed the bag on display by myself, without any assistance from a salesperson. I put the bag in her hand and made her grab one of the handles while I grabbed the other and pretended to be in a tug-of-war over the purse. I looked at her and pointed with my chin not to let go so they would have to kick us both out.

  “Give that back to me, I had the purse first!” I said loudly so the security guard would see us. Immediately the LV “CIA” man came over. I acted as though she was being rough with me and made myself out to be the victim. Then I snatched the purse back. Security escorted us both out immediately. Many of the customers turned to see the commotion and blocked the bodyguard running toward us. They pushed us out the door and I grabbed the woman’s hand. We ran as fast as we could, but her veil and her heels made a speedy escape impossible. We ducked into an alley, cut across a block, and hid in a cheap souvenir shop. We went all the way in and covered our faces with maps. We caught our breaths and smiled after a few minutes. She remained in the back and I stepped outside to see if her bodyguard was following us. I went back in and tried speaking a few words of French and English to her.

  “Altair,” she said, pointing to herself. Her English and French were nonexistent, so I pointed to the map to ask her where she wanted to go. She looked at the map and didn’t understand me. I handed her my cell phone and gestured for her to make her call. She shook her head and pointed at me. Did she want to go home with me? Did she not have a backup plan?

  “Me?” I pointed to myself.

  “Oui,” she said. I took a deep breath and took in what I had just done. Now what? I nodded and pointed to my eye. I left the shop and saw a taxi approaching the curb. I took her hand and we ran out of the store and into the taxi as a passenger was just getting out. I gave the driver my address. The taxi driver was a Muslim man who looked us up and down and spoke to us in Arabic. Altair asked him to translate for her. Although they spoke a different dialect, the taxi driver was able to converse with her. She cried as she tried to explain to him, and he translated in French for me. I struggled to make out what he was saying.

  “Her name is Altair,” he said. “She says thank you for saving her life” was what I could make out. He turned to me and asked what had just happened. I begged him to continue translating. “She says she wants to go home with you until she can figure out what to do next.” He turned to me and insisted I tell him what had just happened. Should he take her to an embassy or a hospital? I told him as best as I could that she just needed to rest at my apartment and then she would be all right.

  We got out of the taxi and made it into the lobby. Madame Bodé saw me with Altair and raised her nose up in the air and walked up to her apartment on the first floor. We took the service elevator to the sixth floor. I bumped into Marina and didn’t bother introducing Altair to her. I told her I would explain later and quickly went to my little room. I locked the door behind us. Altair took in my room and cried. Sometimes when I looked at my tiny little place I would cry too, so I didn’t blame her if she hated it.

  She cried for an hour nonstop. I remembered when Luna would call me and cry on the phone a lot; I would tell her to leave her husband, but she didn’t have the strength to do it. I wondered if Altair was regretting her actions already or if the relief of finally being a “free” woman was so overpowering. I heated up some leftovers and she tried to eat. I handed her my cell phone again and asked her in both French and English if she wanted to call anyone. She shook her head and offered me a gold bracelet. She put it in my hand and folded my hand to show me it was for me to keep. I shook my hand and told her I could not take it. I asked her in English and my best French what she planned to do. Did she have lots of money to rent an apartment or travel somewhere? She emptied her purse and took out a pen. I gave her a piece of paper and she drew a plane. She shook her head.

  “No passport,” she uttered. For many hours we babbled, until I understood that she was scared for her life because her husband had threatened to kill her when they returned to Turkey because he suspected that she was having an affair with her bodyguard. He’d beat her the night before and she showed me the bruises on her legs. She couldn’t run because of her bruises.

  I had read that since Turkey was trying to get admitted to the European Union “honor killings” were no longer allowed, but that didn’t mean they didn’t happen. If she returned to Turkey her husband’s family could starve her and force her to commit suicide and get around the new laws. Altair was heartbroken because she could never go back to see her own family again. She was scared for her family and children… and I’d thought the life of a Latina in the United States was tough.

  The next day we went to a boutique on the rue de la Pompe and she pawned all her valuables. She got back lots of money, but not enough to last her a lifetime, or even a year. I tried convincing Altair to go to the French authorities to see if she could get asylum, but she refused out of fear that she would get deported back to Turkey.

  I knocked on Marina’s door and explained Altair’s situation. She immediately sympathized and took Altair with her to be her assistant on her nanny and cleaning lady jobs. Marina kept her ears open for any new jobs that Altair could assist her with. Altair learned things quickly, and adapted to a new life. She was a new woman, but she still could not take off the veil; even a bird that lived in a cage all his life before he escaped misses his cage.

  CHAPTER 15

  Boys in the Banlieue

  The phone rang in the middle of the night. Altair grabbed her purse and stared at the door, as if waiting for someone to kick it open. I picked up my cell phone and wondered what kind of emergency merited a call at that time.

  “Hello,” I snapped.

  “Canela, it’s Gina, sorry to wake you—” the voice said.

  “Gina? How did you get my number?” I interrupted.

  “I got it from your sister Rosie,” Gina explained. Damn, I had told her not to give it to anyone, especially someone from my past.

  “How did you know I was in Paris?”

  “Girl, I can get dirt on anyone, you know
that, so finding you was easy,” she bragged. “Listen, I know it’s late in Paris, but I wanted to get you on an assignment right away,” said my former editor—not the one who’d accused me of losing my objectivity or the Latina magazine editor I’d left holding the bag.

  “I’m not a journalist anymore.” I replied.

  “I heard, but we don’t have anyone stationed in Paris right now—so maybe you can cover the riot,” she said.

  “What riot?” I asked.

  “The one happening over the two Arab teenagers getting electrocuted,” she said.

  “Oh, yes, yeah,” I said, pretending to know what she was talking about.

  “Can you do it?” Gina asked, almost begging.

  “I don’t do stories—” I was about to explain how I didn’t want to write anymore.

  “I know you can do a great job. So can you do it?”

  I remained silent, not sure what to say since I was barely awake.

  “We’ll pay you double,” Gina replied, taking my silence as me playing hardball with her. I thought about it for a few more seconds and then my stomach growled, trying to answer for me. I could sure use the money.

  “Okay. I’ll do it. How many words and when do you want it?” I said, caging in a yawn. Gina explained all the details and I couldn’t sleep that night, scheming how I was going to get into a predominantly Arab neighborhood without speaking French or Arabic. When I had to go to South Central for a story I was never afraid, because I acted like I belonged. I was constantly mistaken for an Arab in Paris, but would people in the banlieue see me as one of them if I could barely speak French? Like them, I too felt like I didn’t belong in Paris.

  I called Henry first thing in the morning and he refused to help me. He claimed he was busy, but I quickly caught him in a lie.

  “Do I have to tell the police about all the truffle cans in your kitchen cabinets?” I wheedled with a girlish voice.

  “Darling, you’re threatening me; that’s not nice. Is it because of Bassie?”

  “I couldn’t care less about you and Bassie. But she’s a nice kid, so just don’t mess with her heart.”

  “She’s a big girl. She does all right for herself,” Henry replied, teasing me.

  “Henry, just come with me. I need you… to help me translate,” I begged him.

  “Fine. Just so you know, I’ve already sold off the truffles and there is no evidence in my flat, but I’ll do it.”

  We took the metro to just outside of Paris where black and Arab youths were burning up cars. As we approached the neighborhood I heard loud music coming from cars, including a song in Spanish called “Gasolina,” which I would later come to know as a classic reggaetón song. It served as a wonderful anthem even though it was in Spanish because the cars were up in flames and they kept throwing gasoline on more cars and setting them on fire. I took pictures from a distance until a group of teenagers approached us. Henry stiffened up and I said, “Salut! Ça va?”—the equivalent of “What’s up?”—to them, acting like I belonged and was so happy to see them. I’d dressed down, in jeans, and I pretended I was simply back in South Central during the riots. Let me just add that a riot in Paris bears no resemblance to a riot in Los Angeles. Sure there were fires, but the difference is they didn’t have weapons. In L.A. the riots were so violent and vicious even heroes like firefighters got shot. On the fringes of Paris, only cars were getting burned and an occasional person was getting hurt. When my editor had mentioned “riot” I’d seen glimpses of Los Angeles in flames, smoke visible from a distance, looting, violence—the end of the world. Here it was just young dark men pissed, but without enough resources to do much damage. That’s how oppressed and poor they were; they couldn’t even afford to take the riot into the city and really burn down Paris, like the U.S. media was claiming they were.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked with an open and receptive face, free of judgment. I introduced myself as a reporter from Los Angeles, letting them know that I wanted the United States to know about the mistreatment of Arabs in France. So what if we were mistreating them all around the world? We really wanted to know how bad the French were to their Arabs. They hesitated at first, but I informed them that in Los Angeles the riots in the sixties and in the nineties all started because African-Americans felt the system was unjust and were so outraged by the injustice they saw they had to do something.

  They quickly got that I was a passionate sympathizer with their cause and the teenagers felt empowered by my comparison. One whispered to another and they told Henry they had a friend who was a rapper who could really tell it like it is. We went into the banlieue. It was worse than the projects my high school friend Maria had lived in. It was mostly a concrete structure with no style. You would think that in Paris, the capital of the art world, they could design prettier buildings to stack up people. The teenage boys knocked and Mohammed, who went by “M. C. Momo,” came out. He was twenty-one and good-looking, trying to make himself out to look like a French version of an American rapper. Henry introduced me and he looked me up and down with attitude. I checked him out up and down and smiled, unafraid of his bravado. He wasn’t the first rapper I had interviewed, so I knew how to speak his language and asked him what kind of rap he performed. He was impressed by my knowledge of the different rapping styles and I told him my favorite rap group was NWA. To Henry’s amazement, M. C. Momo welcomed us into his parents’ apartment. The teenage boys excused themselves. We went into his parents’ apartment and his mother ignored us and continued watching a Brazilian soap opera my mother had already seen. He escorted us to his tiny room, which was also his homemade studio, with synthesizer and all.

  “So why aren’t you out there, rioting?” I asked him. He laughed at my boldness, but Henry hated translating my brash questions.

  “I wait until it gets dark—I’m not stupid,” Henry translated.

  “So why are people doing this?” I asked.

  Mohammed explained that he’d been born in France, his father had been born in France, and his grandfather had been born in France, but they were not treated with the rights promised to them as French citizens. They would always be treated like foreigners, like scum, he said. I explained to him that I was Mexican-American and what that meant and he instantly had an affinity with me. He understood what it was like to have a double identity: “We don’t have any opportunities and we’re constantly harassed by the police.” He put on a CD of his rap song about les flics-—the cops—and sang along to it. Henry took deep breaths, wondering how much longer he’d have to endure this urban anthropological investigation. I tried singing along to Mohammed’s song and he continued, playing his next song.

  After a while, Henry looked at his watch and I told him he could go. He muttered that he wouldn’t leave my side because he was scared for me. I assured him that I felt safe singing along to music. He told me to call him if I got into trouble. It was going to get dark soon and anything could happen, he warned me. I assured him I could take care of myself. Mohammed told him good-bye and continued playing his songs and I threw in questions. He got ready to go out that night and I asked him if I could go with him. Mohammed told me to put on a baseball cap and hide my hair under it. I dressed myself as a guy and went out to see the fires with Mohammed. We mostly watched on the sidelines. At the end of the night Mohammed gave me his number and told me to call him if I needed more information. I thanked him for his interview and gave him my number.

  I rushed home and found Altair crying. She was discovering that freedom was not so nice. She spent her days taking care of rich women’s children and she missed her own children. Altair showed me pictures of her children, and it broke my heart. I would have cried next to her, but my deadline was pressing. In the morning I sent the story to Gina via e-mail. In the afternoon I got a call from her telling me it needed to be “sexier.”

  “Americans want the French to be embarrassed and exposed. We want to laugh at them and point the finger back,” Gina confessed. I tried to
explain to her that things were not as bad as people in the United States thought they were. Yes, they have a race problem, but Paris was not burning up in flames like my little sister Rosie, who had just called to check on me, thought. Yes, the U.S. embassy had issued a threat alert to all the American tourists in Paris, but only because the train to the airport went through the area where the cars were being burnt. Nobody was targeting Americans.

  “Nobody seems to be affected except the poor people in those neighborhoods,” I explained. “I walked down the Champs-Élysées in the heat of the so-called riot and nobody stopped shopping,” I insisted. I finally had to tell Gina I was not going to write lies to save my story. I hung up and turned on the TV.

  The minister of the interior, whose last name sounded like a disease, and who would later become the president of France, had infuriated the rioters by calling them racaille—scum. The boys in the banlieue continued their rioting with more fury until President Chirac felt obligated to say a few kind words that hinted at the identity crisis France was going through. He told the rioters that they, too, were children of France. He promised more opportunity and equality, and assured them that change would come.

  A few days after the rioting stopped Mohammed called me to see if I wanted to come over and listen to his new rap song about the disturbances. I knew it was an excuse to get into my panties, and I reminded myself that he was only twenty-one and this could only lead to disaster.

  I went over to his apartment anyway and entered his room unnoticed. He played the song and sang most of it for me. I clapped and sang along. Then he kissed me. There are kisses and then there are kisses, the kind that awaken you to your divinity. How could this young guy I could barely understand electrify me with his kiss? I kissed him back and we whispered things in Spanish and English and Arabic and French. I caressed his high cheekbones and rubbed my face on his face. In his dark eyes I could see my soul. When he penetrated me we gasped together and at that moment we were both worshipping the same God.