Only in Paris could I find bustling street action by day and peaceful alleyway scenery by night.
No more study hours or lights out, no more stealing snacks from rooms next door, no more advisers telling me to do work, no more waving to friends on the walkways in between classes. Instead, it’s 6:00 p.m., and I’m in a crowded metro that has been stuck underground for a full 15 minutes. The woman next to me is trying to get cell service to call her husband. She screams, “Le metro s’est arrêté.” She’s going be late for dinner. I hear an announcement from the speakers reminding us to be aware of pickpockets. The couple behind me is kissing, and the old lady with the red-lipstick next to them is trying to read her book — L’Etranger by Albert Camus. Welcome to Paris: a minimalistic capital that serves as a live museum to thousands of years of art history, culture, and now a humble group of Choate Study Abroad students.
Paris first greeted me with its characteristic “French sarcasm.” I was sitting in a cafe, eating an omelet with ham, when a waiter ran towards me, yelling, “No! No! Mademoiselle, you can’t eat that. It’s pork!” I looked at him blankly for a moment and then realized that he must have heard me speaking in Turkish to my parents and made the conclusion that we were Muslim. I jokingly told him that I absolutely loved pork, to which he replied, “Isn’t it a sin?” It was his way of telling me that he knew I was a stranger to his country, and it was my way of learning that I had left the safe and politically correct bubble of Choate.
Further differing from Choate’s atmosphere, my term abroad experience had a very unique dynamic due to its timing and my personal background. Even though the coordinators decided not to cancel the program, we knew that we were going to counter a very tense post-attack atmosphere in Paris. Coming from Turkey, I could empathize, in some ways, to what the citizens must have been feeling. Remains of the tragedy were apparent: Taxi drivers interrogated passengers about their carry-ons. Armed soldiers patrolled the streets in Marais. I never felt unsafe in Paris, but I could feel the people’s fear.
Living on an isolated campus, we rarely get to experience (and often forget) interactions with strangers, or being strangers ourselves to people around us. In Paris, life was just the opposite. One rainy Sunday, I walked around with my camera, hoping to capture glimpses of those strangers. I turned around the corner and saw one of the strangest scenes I have ever witnessed — one that would surprise me even in an art gallery, never mind in front of me. A French girl, with a cigarette burning between her fingers and a scarf wrapped around her neck, stared blankly at what seemed to be a toilet bowl on the sidewalk. She didn’t make a single movement. I saw that she was staring at the rotting cigarettes at the bottom of the toilet. I asked her if she was okay, and she shocked me once again with her answer: “That looks just like my life. A cigarette that’s quickly burning out, just to be left with all the other rotting cigarettes.”
However brief, exchanges such as these were both jarring and endearing. Clearly, I was submersed in a world wholly different from the one that I had become familiar with at Choate. As enlightening as those experiences were, I must admit, it feels good to be back inside our bubble.
