Our Hood

We have grown to love our neigbourhood - the 15th arrondissement - which at first glance is not the most interesting or attractive in Paris. It is a mixed district of Paris with a lot of ugly seventies architecture along the banks of the river seine on one side and the touristy district of Eiffel Tower/Champ de Mars in the area immediately surrounding the embassy. However, we have learned to love its grungy nooks and crannies, the splattering of Haussmanian apartments, the little shopping districts, the graffiti, a few excellent restaurants, the ethnic supermarkets and the Sunday market under the railway bridge. Situated on the left bank of the river and sharing the famous Montparnasse district, it is the city's most crowded and populous districts. It is also boasts the tallest skyscraper in Paris, which is not exactly a good thing as this is possibly the ugliest building in Paris, towering self-conciously above the surrounding elegant apartments and bourgeois neighbourhoods of the 14th and the 7th arrondissements and competing with the Eiffel Tower for macho dominance.

But most of all the neighbourhood for us is about the people that live here. It is a mixed neighbourhood, where merchants, school teachers, actors, retired Generals and senior public servants, leaders of industry, poor communities, migrants and clochards mingle in the bistros, food markets, parks and in the small concrete public spaces. Some 20 percent of the population of 233,000 are non-French, mostly "pied-noirs" from North-West Africa, other Magreb countries and the Middle East, with about 12 percent African, 4 percent from non-EU countries and 4 percent from EU countries.

The area has a real village feel for us. We have become very friendly with the people that work in the local patisserie, the cheese guy (his shop is considered one of the best in Paris with the "Presidential seal of approval", whatever that means), the owner of the little worker's bistro down the road, the little wine store, the foie gras specialist, the oyster shucker (who still hasn't asked us for his tray back, two years later), the butcher who understands what meat we need when making curries and stirfries (it took some time), our fishmonger (who gets we can't remember the names of fish - daurade, lotte, cabillaud, racasse, merlu, bar, loup (that is bass, not wolf) - and the other regulars at the market. Despite the vast disparities in income in the neighbourhood, people live side-by-side in harmony, which is not always the case in other mixed neighbourhoods in Paris.

Well.....so it seemed. This was put to the test a few days ago when a 15 year old from a neighbouring district stabbed and killed a 21 year old who lived in the government housing estate ("HLM") a few blocks from the embassy. This made headlines but his death would have escaped the attention of the media and locals if it wasn't for the fact that this involved unemployed, migrant youth living in HLM government housing and who are known to hang around the public square every evening playing really dreadful French rap and hip hop music and occasionally soccer, and spray-paint grafitti on walls (with official approval). And for the fact this tragedy led to a public outburst of anger with clashes between different groups of youth and some minor (compared to the regular acts of vandalism in other arrondissements) vandalism of shops and cars. What followed was the arrest of 40 juveniles and the interrogation of many more. While we have always considered these "gangs" to be harmless - just bored, underemployed and waiting for a break from French companies reluctant to take on people with the wrong name or address -selling cannabis and tacky souvenirs to tide them over in the mean time, the middle class residents of the neighbourhood have now used this aberration as an excuse to raise their concerns with the Mayor's office. There is now talk of video surveillance, a higher police presence, neighbourhood watch programs and "preventative" measures. While tensions were perhaps always simmering under the surface, this tragic event has disturbed the delicate social balance in this mixed community, bringing to the surface the intolerance of some older residents, the distrust of the youth and the inequalites faced by residents of government estates in the area.

Wim and I happened to be walking past where the stabbing occurred yesterday and found ourselves among 100 people attending a memorial service for Demba Toure, the young man that was killed. There was a good cross-section of the community at the Service - young and old, all the HLM residents, but also other locals, merchants, school teachers, even some young French women who had seen posters about the memorial service and were moved by press stories that Demba planned to move in with his girlfriend (he had just signed a lease) and start a butcher shop with her. As one girl in the crowd said, the guy had dreams and a loving family, something seemingly forgotten in the public discourse. The site was covered in flowers and candles and all his young friends were wearing t-shirts bearing his name and photo. An imam was presiding over the service. Outsiders were welcome. The service showed that this was a close-knit community that stuck together at difficult times.

After sharing this solemn moment with friends of Demba, we moved on to the dry cleaner and the local tailor to be reminded that the social divisions are ever present. The tailor expressed his dismay at the local hooligans and said they should all move away. An older woman walked in and declared "C'est chaud ici" before expressing her views about migrants in the community. We walked around the corner and noticed a police presence, and there could be no doubt that riot police were positioned discreetly in a side street somewhere as is the French practice, awaiting a possible outbreak of violence.

We hope the advocates of "law and order" do not win the day. The poorer communities clearly need equality of access to education and employment services, rather than the force of the State.

Last night, we discovered a quaint little theatre, le theatre de St Louis, hidden in an apartment building on the banks of the Seine on Ile St Louis. Walking down the little laneway leading to the theatre and knocking on the door, we thought we had somehow missed it or gotten the address wrong. But no, this was obviously the front room of somebody's house that had been converted into an intimate, cavernous theatre. A charming elderly gentleman opened the door and announced that it was "free seating" - No kidding: we were the only ones there, along with an elderly couple who had already fallen asleep in the corner and a younger, well-dressed resident of Isle St Louis. What followed was a performance of enchanting, haunting fusion of gregorian, Ancient Greek, Judeo-Spanish and Middle Eastern chants, sacred, medieval music and percussion - exotic, spirtually sensual and transporting. Catherine Braslavsky was breathtaking with her other-worldly voice. She has dedicated her life to interpreting Hilegard's music, is a specialist of the Gregorian Chant and has studied Indian, Judeo-Spanish, harmonic chant and ancient musics. The singing, some modern and interesting interpretations of Hilegard Von Bingen's chants, were interspersed with narration of ancient fairytales (dionysos, Apollon) by the talented Joseph Rowe, an American composer who had studied music with the late Nubian master Hamza El Din. He played a range of instruments - the oud, tibetan and Burmese bowls, Bendir, darabuka, Tanbura, Mbira. It felt wrong that these exraordinary musicians were playing to a room of four or five people......

This was followed by dinner at the well-known St Louis restaurant Mon Veil Ami. This is a restaurant we had been trying to get into for some time. It does what French restaurants don't do very well- expand the traditional fare with Asian and other influences. My caramelised poitrine de Cochon in a lemongrass/ginger broth, and Wim's stuffed guinea fowl were good, though not outstanding. The menu was very reasonably-priced for this part of town and full of a fashionable crowd sitting on long communal tables. It is a good place to go if you find yourself at the Notre Dame and want to avoid the tourist-hell cafes or bacteria lane (that well-known district of greasy kebab shops and bland greek restaurants in the Latin quarter). Of course, there are a million good restaurants, but this one is a short walk from the Notre Dame.

We hopped into a taxi to the drone of Kylie Minogue on the radio. It wasn't hard to blot this out with the echo of the chanting and hypnotic percussion still with us......