We decided to venture to the Paris streets for a
short final stroll since text communication had improved with Henry the Driver.
The plan for a 10:00 AM pickup time and ride to the airport felt more solid
with Henry’s confirmation. Unpacking at the Beaubourg felt like a fruitless
effort. My bag, filled tightly with the Rick Steves packing cubes, might be
impossible to reconfigure. I carefully selected one or two clothing items and wedged
the cubes back into the suitcase. The possibility a hair trigger explosion of
my possessions just like the clowns do with their make-believe suitcases, worried
me.
Henry showed up as promised, dressed professionally
and offering a cheerful smile. A native of Sri Lanka, Henry knew his business
and offered a van easily capable of handling passengers and their bags. We met
him by happenstance upon arriving in Paris on June 6th. He transported nervous
new arrivals, Molly and Dana, Reed and me down the highway from Charles
DeGaulle airport to Rue de Rivoli. We liked Henry’s service, clean car and warm
presence so much we all would eventually return to the airport with his
assistance on the way back to the United States. I figured we would retrace the
route in the opposite direction and Henry would usher us out of Paris. Turns
out he provided much more.
Henry and our drive to the airport that proved to
be the highlight of our final day. He took us through the neighborhoods of
Paris we had never seen, pointed out a South Asian neighborhood where he said
Tamil guerrillas planted ill-gained earning and laundered money from human
trafficking and the drug trade. Some of the guerrillas died and their
businesses went up for sale and deeply discounted prices. He said “you could
buy a business for 250,ooo euros,” if you knew the right people.
Henry had an amazing eye for identifying the Asian
nationalities populating the neighborhood. “See those 5 guys. They are from
Syria or Afghanistan.” Henry arrived in Paris 30 years earlier and witnessed
the change in attitude of the French toward refugees and immigrant. “They
wanted us then—to do the jobs.” The situation had worsened since then. Henry
sympathized with the difficulties of the more recent arrivals.
Henry demonstrated the same skill for
distinguishing African nationalities. Reed asked about a middle-aged African
lady walking down the street in a colorful long dress, head wrapped in an
equally colorful turban. “She’s from Sudan. I can tell by the dress.” A very
dark-skinned young man, handsome and slender, spoke into a cellphone. “He’s
from Sierra Leone.” Henry’s skills resembled a trained FBI profiler. His line
of work explained the talent. “I drive a cab, I get to know everyone.”
Henry revealed a good heart, he had a nice
compassion for the refugees, almost all young men. He showed us tents clumped
on city streets, adjacent to the highway. Lines of blue tents spoke of a hard
knocks life. The marginal people were living on the literal margins of society,
sleeping on cement just a few feet from the passing cars. Only a strong young man could survive these conditions I thought
silently. “We are all just people,” Henry said. He added that he gives money to
help others.
As we approached Terminal 2E Henry said “it’s
disorganized over here.” He must have referred to the action inside the
terminal as much as the convergence of cars and cabs at the curb. We struggled
mightily to negotiate through a weird maze of traveler obstacles in Terminal 2E
of the DeGaulle airport: self-serve kiosks that didn’t function, a series of
airline employees leading you back-and-forth to nowhere, and finally, when you
began pulling your hair out with fear of missing your flight—you would be
permitted to go to a desk that processed tickets and handled baggage—just like
it had been done since 1960. Why all the intervening steps? Then you got on a
massive line to clear customs. Air France created a bad scene for their
travelers and turned the departure from France into a special kind of
nightmare. The French have not mastered the art of processing of visitors on
their way out of country, a needless flaw in their generally skillful tourist
industry repertoire. Somebody later told me the Terminal 2E is referred to as
“Air Chance”.
On a more pleasant note, Henry told us how
fortunate he feels to have raised two children in France. His daughter achieved
a college degree and makes a good living in the medical field. He approved of
her boyfriend, a volleyball coach, “a charming fellow.” Henry’s son lacked the
daughter’s ambition. Henry’s phone call to his wife centered on the son’s
upcoming exams and whether or not the boy had studied sufficiently. Henry’s
story had the familiar sound of an American immigrant success story; the father
works as a cab driver; he eventually prospers enough to gets his own van and
prospers in a small business. Henry and his wife urged their children to study
diligently and the next generation moves into the professions and a better life
than the parents.
We felt appreciative of the tour of Paris provided
by our driver. Henry showed us more in a 20 minute foray through Parisian
immigrant neighborhoods about how the “other half” lives than we had learned in
a week as tourists in the Marais district.
Maybe we learned something from our contact with
the locals, after all. If so, Rick Steves would have been proud of us.
travel day-- 7/5/17
