None of this would be without what was before
walking down memory lane in the 18th arrondissement of Paris
While spending some days in Paris where I lived for 6 years, I decided to spend an evening in the 18th arrondissement. This was my neighborhood in those days.
Upon existing the Métro at Barbès-Rochechouart, I enter a different part of Paris, a familiar one. There’s a crush of people, mostly North African, Black and brown. Aunties pushing shopping carts, giggling teenage girls in groups, men in throngs on every street corner. The latter are chatting loudly with each other and peddling everything from lottery tickets to cheap mobile phones to weed.
A man hands me a piece of paper advertising the services of Professeur Michel, a medium-voyant-guerrisseur (medium-fortune teller-healer), who can apparently find the solution to all of life’s problems: love, fidelity, work, business, health concerns, even getting rid of the evil eye. If you’re ever in Paris and need his services (he claims a 100% success rate within 48 hours!), here you go:
So that’s on offer in Barbès, as are wholesale shoes and scarves, prayer rugs, SIM cards, designer fakes, boubous – you can get it all. I wander into Dunes, which looks to be a new pastry shop selling mountains of delectable Algerian sweets, a kaleidoscope of pistachios and almonds and honey. I’m tempted to try but decide to continue further into the Goutte d’Or neighborhood.
This is the heart of the African neighborhood in Paris, and it’s also where I used to live. I head to the Rue des Gardes, which in recent years has become a small mecca for artisans and creators from the neighborhood who have opened ateliers as part of an urban development project. One such creator is Jacqueline Ngo Mpii, the Founder and CEO of the Little Africa, a cultural center and concept store selling apparel, jewelry, home decor, books, fine art prints and food products sourced ethically from artisans across the African diaspora, as well as art exhibits and events. Definitely worth a visit.
This place is a reminder that neighborhoods and cities change, while they also stay the same. Leaving the Rue des Gardes, I find myself in the backstreets of the Goutte d’Or, passing boutiques selling wax print fabric, cassava, plantains and Scotch bonnet chilies, wigs and hair extensions. Back on the Boulevard de Barbès, I pass the apartment where I used to live. In front, there’s still the maelstrom of hustlers, the KFC, the exit of the Chateau Rouge Métro. Here, it seems, nothing has changed at all.
As I make my way up the hill to Montmartre, the sun is just beginning to go down. Walking instinctually up familiar streets, I see that there are new coffee shops and health food cafes advertising poke bowls (Paris seems to be having a poke bowl moment!) and vegan fare. The times have clearly changed from the days in which I had difficulties as a vegetarian in Paris. At the same time, the old spots that I remember from those times are mostly still around. And so, I discover, are the memories.
Climbing the steep stairs at the apex of the hill, I emerge onto the esplanade of the Sacre-Coeur. I did this countless times during my Parisian years, but the vista to which you arrive never loses its gravitas. The actual basilica is of course magnificent, but it’s the view of the entire city from up on the hill that takes your breath away.
As always, there’s a throng of people – couples kissing, families posing for photos, vendors hawking light-up Eiffel Towers and beers. I sit down on the crowded steps and listen to a man singing “Wonderwall” and playing guitar. He says that he’s from Mauritius and he welcomes new Instagram followers.
My mind wanders to the early days of dating the man who would become my husband and Rohan’s dad. On most nice spring and summer evenings, we would head up here with a picnic basket – dinner with a view. Sometimes, friends would bring blankets and meet us. We would drink wine, play the guitar and sing, often befriending visitors and neighbors alike. As I recall now, these gatherings almost always simmered up organically and spontaneously. These were, after all, the years before kids, when we were young and fabulous and free.
Times have changed, as I’m reminded as I gaze at the sun going down. The afternoon has been remarkably clear and almost balmy, very much the oddity for a February day in Paris. The sunset is painting the Montmartre skyline all different shades of orange, yellow and violet. I don’t recall seeing this before and it occurs to me, not for the first time on this trip, that during my years in Paris I actually didn’t look up at the sky very much. Maybe I wasn’t a sunset person then, I think.
I think of this again as I continue to wander around Montmartre and catch sight of numerous stars in the darkening night horizon. Was it always possible to see this many stars in Paris?, I wonder. Was I just not paying attention? It occurs to me that this is quite plausible.
I pass numerous other spots engraved with memory. The charming Chez Plumeau, for example, hidden off to one side of the touristy Place du Tertre, where we always used to bring visiting friends. Making my way down the hill to the Lamarck-Caulaincourt area, I decide to have a drink at the Café Francoeur, around the corner from the apartment where we lived.
Over a coupe of champagne and some delicious olives tossed with pieces of preserved lemon, I ignore the plumes of cigarette smoke from the table next to me and think of how the streets of the 18ème are peppered with so many memories. And I consider what it means to retrace old footsteps. As a visitor, with the hindsight of more than a decade and a lot of life lived in that span. It’s a particular kind of recollection.
Walking around my old neighborhood, I see the young woman that I used to be, the places she used to frequent, the stars in her eyes that dimmed her sight to the ones above. I carry her with grace, alongside the knowledge of everything that came after, the heartbreaks, the victories, the living. I think of the words of poet Maggie Smith in her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful:
“We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves—all of our selves—wherever we go.”
To close the night, I take myself to Le Petit Bleu, a neighborhood couscous joint on Rue Muller. I have red wine alongside my vegetable couscous, with a heavy dash of harissa (North African chile paste). It turns out that the owner Samir has left for the evening, so I’m left to chat with his charming 20-year son. Over mint tea, he tells me that he’s taking more of the reins of the restaurant, as his dad is getting older.
We all are. The years pass and the time flies. We come “of age,” which I suppose is what conventional wisdom would say I did in spending my late 20s to early 30s in Paris. But to me, “coming of age” suggests an arrival point or a final destination, and Paris was neither of those things.
It was in fact more like a launching pad.
So much has changed since then. I’ve seen other horizons, lived other lives, reincarnated to put it quite frankly.
But I know that none of this would be without what was before. None of this would be without Paris.
Making my way back to the Métro, I look at the stars overhead and, with a heart full of tenderness, whisper thanks.
“Though you may leave Paris, Paris never really leaves you.” - Janice Macleod
This was a lovely read. Paris can bring on the magic in big ways. You captured it well.
Ramya Vivekanandan: Between your narrative and the well-framed photos, you gave us a vivid, virtual tour of areas and heritage in Paris.
Especially a proud, African heritage, which is quite prominent in France and is visible, too, in Germany.
You stress poetry.
The photos and narrative make a poetic whole.
I have lived in Germany, in the semi-rural areas of the Rheinpfalz, where little village people were my intimates (I am conversant at the C2 level (reading and writing at C1 level) in the German language).
Yours is one of the columns I love, share, and always read.