Friday I had an Iranian taxi driver, a tall elegant man with gray hair and an aristocratic profile. We got into a discussion about the French economy, and he said he would go live in London if he were a young man. "Vous êtes anglaise, n'est-ce pas?"
"I'm American," I said. "Have you ever been there?"
"I had a visa to go to the U.S. in 1980," he said. "It was at the moment of the revolution. I could have gone. I had the paper in my hand. But I came to France instead. Now I regret it."
"There are a lot of Iranians in Los Angeles," I said.
"Yes, everything is more dynamic outside of France," he said. "But my children are here now, and they feel French."
"Do you go back to Iran often?" I said.
"I have a terrain in the south," he said, "but I have never gone back, not even once. I don't know what has happened to it. But things are much better in Iran these days. The new president [Ahmadinejad, who is currently winning a faceoff with the West over nuclear power] is good. Do you know, he has an open day when anyone who wants to can stand in line and see him, and the president welcomes him and listens to him."
As he was talking, he was putting on a CD on for me to hear, and to my surprise, it was a soft baritone voice in English, crooning Rio Bravo. "You will love this," he said. "I am a big fan of Dean Martin. My daughter made me this CD of thirty of his songs. Poor man, he had to pay off the Mafia all his life, and he died alone."
Excellent post. Iranian cabbies are by far the best in Paris - articulate, ironic and great storytellers. Paris has its fair share of ecclectic taxi drivers. One that definitely stands out are the group of Haitian pasteurs. I've met two of them on various occasions - you're always guaranteed a spirited conversation on the topic of religion. While we're on the subject have you ever met the Moroccan woman who smokes reefer in the cab with you? Would love to bump into her again, but that's another story...
Thanks a million for the blog -- like your take on the ville des lumières.
Posted by: peadar o paris | 03 December 2006 at 16:31
"Do you know, he has an open day when anyone who wants to can stand in line and see him, and the president welcomes him and listens to him..."
Gosh, that has an awfully familiar ring to it. Here is a version from the summer of 1940:
Alongside the military genius respected by Vichy, and the artistic genius and great-hearted patron of the arts dear to Cocteau, here [on the left] they celebrated the man of the people, the socialist, the architect of Europe. On 29 June 1940, Deat incredulously noted in his diary: 'Chateau says that the Fuhrer is staying in Paris in rue Jean-Goujon, in an unpretentious hotel where he is paying for his own room...'
- 'France Under the Germans', Phillippe Burrin, Editions du Seuil, 1993, Ch 25.
To put it mildly, it turned out that these people had been deceiving themselves about the nature of the man they admired so fervently, while he himself despised and mocked their gullibility. Plus ca change,... on the streets of Paris, it seems.
Posted by: ZF | 03 December 2006 at 19:39