Rue Rude

Ramadan ends in Paris

When I first came to Paris, none of the Muslims I met (and there were a lot, because Paris small stores are often owned by Muslims, and even my children's establishment-Catholic school had Muslim parents and assistants), no one much observed Ramadan. Most Muslims were pretty secular and even people who were religious would talk about how "my mother" observed it, but they didn't "because I live in France."

Looking back, I think it was after 9/11 that French Muslims became more obviously observant, probably as a result of anti-Muslim prejudice at the time. Anyway, Ramadan is something that most Parisians notice nowadays. The Muslims you are dealing with can't eat or drink and get cranky more easily, and Ramadan, which is a movable month of fasting even from water, is much harder on a long hot summer day than on a short winter's day. 

So everyone is happy today. No longer is the cashier grumpy if you buy a pastry and nibble it in front of him; no longer is your Egyptian friend grouchy from caffeine withdrawal; no longer is the taxi driver peevish because he's been working all day with no food or drink. New Yorkers of every religion are aware of all the Jewish holidays; it's like that in Paris with Eïd al-Fitr. So Happy Eïd, everyone!

Anomalies of French life: defamation laws

"I want to die alive"

Bob Dylan had some major ennuis in France last month, based on an interview he gave Rolling Stone in 2012 in which he made remarks that are perfectly legal in the U.S., where freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution. The interview was subsequently published in the French edition of Rolling Stone and that's where the trouble started.

This country [i.e. the USA] is just too fucked up about color....Blacks know that some whites didn't want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can't pretend they don't know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.

An association of French Croatians had immediately filed a complaint against the singer for "insults" and "provoking hatred." Dylan's trip to France in November, to receive the Legion of Honor award and give some concerts, automatically set the legal process in motion. Dylan had to appear in court, and the case will be decided by a tribunal specializing in media affairs.

 

"No to Islamism. Censured Youth for Le Pen" --Sign on a car just outside Paris

French laws are substantially different from American ones on this subject. Although I don't think Americans are one bit more racist than the French*, the French treat cultural and racial differences very differently from Americans. For example, the French government is legally forbidden to collect any statistics about the different racial, ethnic and religious groups in France, as the American census does by asking your race. 

It's also illegal to insult or malign someone or "provoke hatred" of another group, even in private, which is why Brigitte Bardot, former sex symbol and now ardent animal-rights defender, has been convicted five times for "provocation of racial hatred" because she insulted traditional Muslims in France for slitting sheep's throats to celebrate their holiday Aïd el Kebir. (She has also insulted plenty of other people.)

"Freedom of expression is a right!" Hmm. Vous en êtes sûrs?

In American law, Nazis can freely march through a Jewish neighborhood claiming the Holocaust never happened and the Westboro Baptist Church is legally allowed to picket soldiers' funerals holding signs saying "Thank God for dead soldiers." These things are unimaginable in France, where a blogger was convicted in court and punished for posting that the company he used to work for was a bunch of crooks, and a French TV personality for saying "Most drug dealers are black or Arabs, it's a fact." A singer was condemned for hate speech against women for the kind of lyrics ("Women are whores") every American rapper uses, and Google was sued for auto-suggesting "Jewish" for certain searches.

And yet France forbids women to veil their faces in public, or to wear a veil to school at all-- a rule that has caused remarkably little stir. A Muslim woman recently lost her case in the second-highest court when she was fired from a private day-care center for wearing a hijab. 

Which country is more reasonable?

 

*and you don't hear nearly as much about American racism from French people since Jean-Marie Le Pen came in second in the French presidential race in 2002.

The tea party (not that one) on the Pope

One of my neighbors, whom I'll call Madame LeBlanc, had been very nice to some of my visitors during the summer, when I was away and they locked themselves out. I bought her a box of good chocolates to thank her. When I knocked at her door with the present, she looked slightly embarrassed, hesitated, and then invited me in for tea. Our newest neighbor, a foreigner, was there, along with three or four very proper-looking French women. The new foreigner and I were wearing jeans, but all the others were in knee-length skirts with sensible shoes and cashmere cardigans. They sipped at tea from flowers-and-gilt-decorated porcelain cups as I sat down for a few minutes. 

They were having an ardent discussion about the new Pope, Francis I. I saw the new neighbor, who is a Protestant, look mystified. Why were these women so upset with the Pope?

The French bourgeoisie is very Catholic. To what extent they are truly religious, I can't say, but for example, most of the top private schools in Paris are Catholic, the upper class goes to church (or pretends it does) more than the other urban classes, and every family seems to be related to a priest (by the way, I am, too). France was long called "the eldest daughter of the Church." It's not really true any more, but deep down, most French people still feel strongly about the Church, one way or another.

For the past two years, the French Catholic church has busied itself with loud concern over gay marriage. There have been several huge marches sponsored by the "Manif' pour tous" movement ["demonstration for everyone"]; the marchers say that they are not against gay people, just against gay marriage.  Just yesterday in the Sunday magazine of the Figaro (the most conservative of the main daily newspapers), there was an insert asking people to sign up for the movement. Archbishops of the Church have been active in fighting gay marriage, which is now legal in France. Being anti-mariage gay has become de rigueur, just as being anti-Halloween was a few years ago. 

And now here is Pope Francis saying that the Church is too "obsessed" with gays, abortion and birth control, and needs to concentrate more on kindness and charity.

"The pope is confused," said one of the women. "Journalists trick him, he says things he doesn't mean."

"The media twist his words," said another. "They try to make him sound as if he thinks gay marriage is not a big problem." 

"Quel scandale that we have reached this point in our society!" said a third. Everyone nodded.

"I hope you're right that he is only confused," said another. "After all, he is a Jésuite...." Her sentence trailed off meaningfully.

 

Notre-Dame de Paris

Waiting to climb the towers of Notre-Dame

Have you ever been to a service at Notre-Dame de Paris? It can be quite moving when you think of all the history that has passed in these walls. Most non-Jews whose families are from western Europe probably have ancestors who took part in building a cathedral or at least a parish church. Nowadays the number of people waiting to climb the tower and look at the gargoyles is greater than the number of people who attend the multilingual services. 

Saint Louis, the king of France, brought back "Christ's crown of thorns" from the Crusades and housed it here while he was building the Sainte-Chapelle specially for it. Later, Mary Queen of Scots was married here. During the French revolution, it was called a Temple of Reason and was sold to a man who wanted to tear it down for its stone. The Cathedral was saved by Napoleon, and it was here, at his coronation, that he seized the crown from the hands of the nonplussed pope and crowned himself Emperor.

World War One, which was fought almost entirely on French (and Belgian) soil, killed ten percent of the French population, including almost all its young men. When the war ended on November 11th, 1918, the great bell of Notre-Dame de Paris, which is named Emmanuel, rang without stopping for eleven hours to express joy. The bell weighs 14 tons and rings in F sharp. It has a beautiful sound but you will hear it only a few times a year. Some of the smaller bells are now being re-cast after years of sounding discordantly. They will arrive in March of next year.

Notre-Dame rewards a patient visit. This is the great front gate with its sculpture of the Last Judgment. It makes you think of the cruel life in the Middle Ages. What a comfort to know that powerful evil people, who had the upper hand in real life, were going to be led off in chains at the End!

All Saints and All Souls in France

The holidays of All Saints and All Souls, November 1st and 2nd, are ancient ones, going back to "our ancestors the Gauls" or Celts, who thought that at this time of year the door opened between the living and the dead. This led to the Celtic Samhain or Halloween, and was so widely observed in pre-Christian Europe that the Christian church co-opted it into a holy day. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! (This was also the case with Christmas, which was conveniently moved to coincide with the Teutonic Yule and the Roman Saturnalia.)

It came as a bit of a surprise when I moved to France that this vigilantly secular nation still keeps so many Catholic national holidays: Toussaint (all saints), Pentecost, Ascension, and Assumption, not to speak of Christmas and Easter. At Toussaint, the schoolchildren of France get a ten-day holiday.

Even though most French people these days never set foot in a church, it is still a widely observed custom to visit the cemetery on All Saints' Day and put flowers on the graves of your loved ones. Carnations are the favorite, and for this reason, you are not supposed to give carnations as a present or bring them to a dinner party.

I like Paris cemeteries because they have such interesting graves, and often you wander by some famous person, especially at Père Lachaise (the most beautiful one), Montmartre, Montparnasse and Passy. General Lafayette, the war hero of the American revolution, is buried at the Picpus cemetery near Nation. The American flag over his grave was left to fly during the entire Nazi occupation of France.

"We were married for 70 years. My grief is very great. Your eyes closed, and mine don't stop weeping. Your inconsolable husband." A bittersweet inscription at the Montmartre Cemetery

The christening

It has been rainy and dark in Paris these past few days, and I had been cooped up in the house all day. When the rain finally stopped around five o'clock, I put on my boots and headed down the stairs for a badly needed walk. When I got to the bottom, I saw someone struggling in the elevator. The shadow bobbed up and down and couldn't seem to get the door open. Thinking it was a child, I opened the door and my neighbor Anne almost fell out. She was in jeans and no makeup, looking a bit disheveled, and trying to lift a big carton of wine glasses. 

"I hope it wasn't too much noise for you yesterday," she said apologetically. Come to think of it, there had been a lot of noise of feet and something rolling back and forth. Our apartment building looks grand, but inside the floors and ceilings could be made of paper for all the noise protection they offer.

"It wasn't bad," I said. My kids used to make a lot of noise too, and our neighbors downstairs never complained. "Was it a birthday party?"

She stood up and wiped her brow. "It was a christening!" she said. "For Valentine [the baby]. There were 100 people!" 

I held the door open for her as I tried to absorb this figure. It's actually typical to have a huge party for a christening, a First Communion, and a confirmation in France, the former "eldest daughter of the Church"-- unlike the U.S. where religious events are mostly private, small family matters. The funny thing is that France is much less religious than the U.S. and less than 10 % of French people set foot in a church even once a year.

I once attended a meeting in Paris where twenty or so couples were being taught the meaning of baptism by a local priest. He went around the room asking each pair of new parents why they wanted to christen their child. It was usually some variation of "to please my family" or "to continue the tradition." Once everyone had spoken, the priest, a young man, sat for a moment, looking sad.

"Not one of you mentioned God or the name Jésus-Christ," he said.

In the U.S., he could just have refused to christen the children. But he went on manfully through the instructions. At the end of the session, all the parents received a date for their child's christening... and its party, with the priest duly invited (and tipped).

Anne was returning some nice glasses to my ground-floor neighbor. She pulled out a pretty little box tied with green ribbon and said, "Here, take some dragées. I have a ton left over!" 

Dragées, usually tied with ribbon and netting, are de rigueur as party favors for christenings. They are little candied almonds, usually blue and white for boys, pink and white for girls, and often silver, too. These were delicious.

 

Mohammed and me

"No lait frais?" I must have made a face. I don't like the boxed UHT milk that most French people still seem to prefer, and I drink fresh milk with my coffee every morning. 

Mohammed, the store owner, looked up from his cash register and said, "Oh, there's none left?"

I shook my head. "Never mind," I said, "I'll just get it later."

"Amid!" Mohammed called, and his younger brother appeared from the spiral steps down to the basement storage room. "Va chercher deux bouteilles de lait frais chez Hassan." Amid disappeared down the street to the other little grocery store run by Moroccans in the neighborhood.

A few minutes later he arrived, smiling, and put the milk on the counter in front of me. "Voilà, madame!"

I think of these guys when American friends and relatives send me scary videos about how Muslim extremists are taking over Europe. Muslim does not mean extremist, guys. Extremists exist, yes, but there are a lot more people like Mohammed and Amid and Hassan. At least in France, insha'allah!

Anomalies of French life: reverence for psychoanalysis; or Le Mur, autism, and the shrinks

In the past few days and weeks, a French documentary about the use of psychoanalysis to treat autism, Le Mur, has been raising hackles and consciousness all over France. I was surprised to learn that psychoanalysis is still overwhelmingly the method used to treat autistic children in France. To put it mildly, it is old-fashioned, like phrenology, and not known for impressive results. You could call it the French exception.

In psychoanalytical treatment of autism, the mother is blamed for the child's autism: she was too cold, or possibly too warm (emotionally "incestuous"), and this terrible behavior made her child psychotic. The nicer shrinks say that the mothers didn't severely damage their child on purpose. 

Le Mur is a Michael-Moore-style documentary in which well known French psychoanalysts who treat autistic children find themselves hoist by their own petard and are made to look arrogant idiots, or at times well-meaning ones, in their very own words. To be fair, some of them seem like kind people; but the things they are saying do not come off as sensible. Furious at the movie, three of the psychoanalysts who had agreed to be interviewed sued the documentary maker, saying their words were taken out of context. Yesterday the tribunal in Lille agreed and ordered the documentary maker, Sophie Robert, to pay them €30,000 and to remove the incriminating passages from the 52-minute-long film, which as she points out means no movie. She plans to appeal. She also plans to reveal all the footage, including some she said was worse than what she put in the movie.

Crocodile representing the mother. The psychoanalyst says she is happy when the child hits it.

However, it was a Pyrrhic victory for the shrinks, because the lawsuit itself made the film far better known. Le Mur is making headlines in all the media this week, and is being shown to people involved with autism around the globe (making France look ridiculous). It has now become a cause célèbre, with journalists calling the Lille judgment a dangerous precedent for censorship, and a French lawmaker sponsoring a bill to make psychoanalysis illegal in treating autism. As it should be. 

In the meantime, the film will be banned from the sites where it is still available in France, so if you are in France when you read this, and want to see it, check it out now. (There are subtitles, although not by an English speaker.) 

If you don't have time, you can get a bit of the flavor of it by these little tidbits. I'm going on and on a bit because the film made me angry. I'm sure you, too, know people with autistic children. Do they strike you as so cold and evil so that they could turn a child psychotic? That is what these shrinks believe. They have forgotten their Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm. Think how many divorces and how much misery they have caused in the families of these children. Psychoanalysis is basically a set of unprovable and undisprovable beliefs: the trademark of a religion, not a science.

The pregnant mother does not think of her child as a person

The child is treated coldly and becomes autistic

The mother does not want the child, and this causes autism

 

or she wants the child too much, and has an incestuous relationship with him 

This shrink declares that all mothers have an incestuous relationship with their child, "whether they are aware of it or not"  (well, that's that then, isn't it?)

As Marie-Antoinette famously said when she was accused of incest toward her son, "La nature se refuse à répondre à une pareille inculpation faite à une mère. J'en appelle à toutes celles qui peuvent se trouver ici." [Nature itself refuses to answer to such an accusation against a mother. I call on all the mothers who might be here."] And the women in the room were furious, and for once supported her; the claim of incest was withdrawn from the accusation.

Note that this shrink is talking about emotional incest by the mother, versus actual incest by the father.

They come clean if they talk long enough.

Literally admitting that a shrink can't actually educate or treat a child with autism.

Progress is not expected from the child. According to psychoanalysis, this liberates the child. Or... just leaves it incontinent and speechless as an adult.

Psychoanalysts try to make you happy with your humdrum little lives; it would be unrealistic to have big hopes for a child with autism.

O.M.G.

The Palais Galliéra and the Papal Nuncio

Yesterday was such a beautiful day. I was in the sixteenth and took this photo of the Palais Galliéra, a fashion museum that is currently closed. It usually does only temporary exhibits, but it has a great little gift store. If you look carefully, under the farthest right giant photo are three workmen in bright blue having their lunch in the sunshine. In France, blue-collar workers really do wear blue collars.

Across the street from the museum is this hôtel particulier with the Vatican's flag flying from it. 

It is the residence of the Papal Nuncio, the Pope's ambassador to France.

That reminds me of a famous story told me by a British neighbor. Supposedly it's a true story from the hard-drinking 1960s, but the details change slightly according to the teller.

A British diplomat, much the worse for champagne, made his way across the crowded cocktail hour to a vision in a scarlet gown and said, "Beautiful lady in red, will you give me this waltz?"

"Certainly not," replied the vision. "In the first place, you are drunk. In the second place, that is not a waltz but the Peruvian national anthem. In the third place, I am the papal nuncio."

The local marché in October

Today in the Bois de Boulogne

It was a beautiful day in Paris today, and I went to the marché and bought flowers and as usual, way more other things than I had planned. You should never go to the marché hungry.

People have different strategies for doing their shopping. Some say you should go first thing, when the stands are just being set up and there is a wide selection. I'm not matinale and have only managed that once. It's less crowded and there's lots of variety still in the middle of the morning. By the early afternoon, as the stands are being packed up, you can get real bargains, all the last fruits for a song because the merchant doesn't want to have it carry the crate almost empty to his truck.

It always cheers me up to go there-- the merchants joke and tease and call out to each other across the aisle, you run into people you know, and there is always some item you haven't seen before. I learned the seasons from this market when I first came to France. No, at the marché you couldn't get strawberries in October or cherries in December. But you could find elvers swimming like live threads of glass, and fiddlehead ferns and topinambours and glimmering silvery mackerel. When the cherries arrived they were more delicious for being available only for three weeks in June. 

Nowadays even France has succumbed to the food-from-afar syndrome, and you can certainly buy apples in May and blackberries in February, even at the marché; but it's still an exciting place to shop for food. Today there were dozens of different kinds of apples; heirloom tomatoes in ten different colors; the last of the sunflowers from Provence; and huge meaty cèpe mushrooms, some as big as a child's arm. The merchant told us to be sure not to cut off the greenish gills underneath, "it's where all the flavor is."

Cèpes and chanterelles this week