Leaving Paris: Immigrants, Refugees and Tourists 7/5/17

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