An American in antiwar Paris
April 20, 2003 - The Santa Fe New Mexican
PARIS - After the war began in Iraq, I received an odd wave of concern from friends in the United States about my welfare. On the same day a few weeks back, I received an e-mail from someone who wanted to know how I was doing “all alone on my own out there” and another from my father who signed off, “Be careful.”
The thing is, I was nowhere near the Middle East. My friends were concerned for my safety and welfare as an American in Paris.
Thanks to a mix of passion and obstinacy, I’ve lived in France three times for close to three years total.
I failed in my first, post-collegiate, attempt to stay, but blame high unemployment and lack of experience.
The second time I left for love. I eventually came back to Paris without the girl and figured out how to be a journalist on the fly. I now refer to myself as “the luckiest guy I know.” Not a day goes by without my thinking that.
To the confusion of my friends and family these days, I explain I haven’t seen a difference in French attitudes toward me between the time things started heating up at the United Nations several months ago and now.
The traveler in me would like to think of my continued acceptance here as the result of my seamless integration into French society, but the realist knows I am still l’Americain. My accent is certainly not French, my vocabulary is quirky, and I regularly massacre masculine/feminine pronoun usage. To cap it off, I ride a mountain bike and wear a shiny silver helmet in a city full of helmet-free riders on upright Dutch cycles.
So why aren’t these “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” throwing me on the next plane back to the U.S.A.?
Much of it comes from the separation the French make between the American people and the U.S. government. A February poll in Paris- Match magazine shows a majority of the French holds a favorable opinion of Americans as a people. However, only 14 percent have a favorable opinion of President Bush and a mere 8 percent think they have something to learn from U.S. foreign policy.
Where French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is seen as a passionate (and stereotypically European) consensus gatherer, Bush is regarded as a cowboy at the reins of a foreign-policy steamroller. “You’re either with us or against us,” as the man says. When you read about anti-American sentiment around the world, it often comes from this sense he creates of bullying people.
Though American tourists visiting Paris say they thought twice before coming to France, those who do are often surprised at how favorably they are received.
Larry and Phyllis Levin, who came from New Jersey to visit their son, were apprehensive before they arrived, but wanted to see things for themselves.
“Friends asked why we wanted to come here and leave our money,” explains Phyllis, “but I wasn’t going to let anyone make me fearful of coming and having the experience for myself.”
By chance, they arrived the day the war started and immediately saw 80,000 people protesting the war in front of the U.S. embassy and consulate at Paris’ Place de la Concorde.
Over the course of their visit, however, they saw the people- versus-politics difference. When they didn’t know which bus stop to use for the Picasso museum, a Parisian woman got off the bus with them and walked the couple the six blocks to the museum’s door.
In Aix en Provence, Phyllis slipped, and “before I had the chance to say I was OK, someone had run to the pharmacy and brought out the pharmacist, and someone else brought ice from a restaurant.”
Later, I spoke with the ultimate American tourist (shorts, sneakers, bright orange baseball cap - La Totale, as the French like to say) and his embarrassed wife just days after war broke out, and they enthusiastically bubbled over about what a nice time they were having.
So where does this spate of ill will between the two countries come from? Does the press make things worse? Without a doubt.
Left-leaning French daily Liberation, for example, never misses a chance to print a photo where GWB looks like a monkey. But then again, there’s only a certain amount of spin you need to put on a phrase like “Old Europe” or a hawks-only peacekeeping summit in the Azores to cement an already overwhelming public opinion.
Despite columnist William Safire’s rogue e-mail-based accusations and critiques of a people who “led the defense of Saddam’s dangerous despotism in the (United Nations)” and “care not a whit for the consequences,” the French believe they have called the United States to task, not because they don’t think Saddam Hussein is a threat, but rather because they don’t understand The Cowboy’s motives.
The French believed Hussein needed to go, but did not agree that diplomatic efforts had run their course. In their eyes, the United States tried to convince the world it was right using shaky evidence that it could neither back up nor continuously prioritize. People from “Old Europe” know from two world wars the human toll of being bombed into oblivion, and much of their hesitancy comes from the fact they wouldn’t wish that on anyone. This underpinned their search for a diplomatic solution long after others had thrown in the towel.
In this light, freedom fries (origin: Belgium), boycotting Au Bon Pain (Boston) cafes and squeezing out stockpiles of French’s mustard (New York-based condiment) into toilets become frustrating to see. Grammatical errors and spelling mistakes aside, the Newsmax Web site and its Boycott France campaign provide some unintentional levity, as does the New York Post’s front page featuring French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin’s head replaced with a weasel’s at a U.N. Security Council meeting.
Kidding aside, are the French really ungrateful? Have they seriously forgotten all the United States has done for them? No, but they disagree with the way things have proceeded.
The French are certainly proud as a people and perhaps even ashamed they couldn’t go it alone and kick out the Germans themselves in World War II.
One of the most touching moments I experienced in the past year was seeing a French friend break into tears when talking about Allied efforts to liberate France. Three generations later, she still couldn’t believe how much soldiers from other countries, particularly the Americans, gave up for France.
What effect does this have on an American in Paris?
For many U.S. expatriates in France, it’s like watching your parents fight. First, there is an immediate and overwhelming need to play diplomat and explain one’s stance to the other in hopes they will understand.
Most importantly, it’s pushed me to understand what I think about the stances taken by the country where I’m from and the one where I live, both of which I love. The French government sought clarification on U.S. government motives, and I, too, have been forced to understand and be able to clearly explain what I feel about both sides. The French are fine with someone saying, “I’m not here as a representative of my government” or “I think the war is necessary,” but they make sure I can back up my feelings and argue them well.
For example, I recently spent hours trying to understand the intricate and long-standing connections that France has forged with the Muslim world, so I could understand its influence on the French U.N. veto threat.
Much of the French “no” has to do with the country’s need to remain sensitive to its population. My neighborhood in eastern Paris is a fairly representative cross-section of a country that includes an estimated 4 million to 5 million Muslims in a total population of 60 million.
This need for sensitivity, combined with historic ties to the Muslim world, forces France to take a much closer look at how this would resound in her homeland, something the United States does not need to consider as carefully.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., put it pretty well in a speech at Georgetown University on Jan. 23: “If anything, our transatlantic partners have a greater interest than we do in an economic and political transformation in the greater Middle East. They are closer to the front lines. More heavily dependent on oil imports. Prime magnets for immigrants seeking jobs. Easier to reach with missiles and just as vulnerable to terrorism.”
A stranger, more personal side effect of being torn between the two countries has been a heightened sensitivity to ... everything. This most seemingly indulgent and cliched existence as a journalist in Paris has created a guilt-tinged, kinetic awareness to the world around me.
The highs have become higher and the lows lower in the way they do in the months following a move to a new country. You’re either dancing or you’re moping, and anything in-between gets pushed to one end or the other.
Everything takes on a new importance and a need to be appreciated: Wasting time seems unthinkable, the birth of a friend’s son brought tears to my ever-stoic eyes, music sounds as if some barrier has been pulled down in my ears, and I’ve learned more about myself in the last few weeks that I have in months.
Over an hour before the March 15 protest officially began at Place de la Concorde, the space was already filling with people, and the air was charged with energy. In front of me, a group burned an American flag, and all around speakers blared the voice of John Lennon singing Give Peace a Chance.
Giant temporary fences and a bumper-to-bumper caravan of police transport trucks created a multilayer barrier, keeping the protesters more than 100 yards from the U.S. embassy and consulate buildings. As close as possible to the embassy, a large Iraqi flag hung over a fence, and next to it stood Shaker Alsaadi, president of the association of Iraqis in France. I interviewed him for 10 minutes, talking about the stances of the French, American and Iraqi governments. I thanked him and shook his hand.
Then I turned my back on him and walked as far away as I could before a wave of nausea knocked my journalist “mask” to the cobblestones. Alsaadi could have been anyone, but he became the shrink prodding me about the troubled relationship of my parents - France and America - and the reasons they were fighting.
These countries whose glories I blurt at anyone who will listen - road trips or train rides, hugs or kisses, apple pie at a diner or tarte tatin at a cafe, friends and friends, passions and passions - fell out of each other’s favor and warped my feelings for each in the process.