PART I: SIDEWALKING

The Notre Dame looks proudly clean in the summer sun of 2006. The rose window stares at us with a Da Vinci Code wink. We have just finished learning how to make a baguette inside one of the tents that dot the precincts. This is the Notre Dame fair, unleashing midway on and has kids and adults yelling at each other in French. Of course, this is Paris. A two-toned pavement, the city elongates and vagabonds with our bohemian tastes. My partner counts the concrete blocks, I mentally color those that seem plain. An hour ago, while I rolled the dough, the baguette-master (that’s what I name him) urged me to fist the plump white elastic form hard, even harder. His rambunctious “Allez-y” had already allayed my fear that I would remain forever uneducated in bread-making skills, especially of this kind.

I emerge victorious with a well-baked baguette with extra twists in its ends, my signature. I also realize, I competed with kids whose mothers egged them on. We munch on the fresh fare and quickly go inside the cathedral where a hymn goes on. A woman falls at the feet of saint tucked inside a cove and weeps. The window glass mosaic dances with candle flames, bluegreenwhited.

Later, we walk down on Pont St. Michel, the bridge that offers a stunning view of the Notre Dame spire. The slate-colored river actually looks blue and receptive to an old man throwing crumbs down from the bridge. He smiles at us. Starts telling us a story I need translations for every now and then. His olive skin sizzles in the June sun and the fleecy head juts out at the clouds above. He tells us of the police chief Papon who had drowned his family in the river along with several others. Yes, Algerians who wanted to be in this country. Like him. From shepherd lands Ferdaus hasn’t visited ever. Yes, Bibliothèque Nationale would have more of it. But won’t we listen to his oral history?

“I’m feeding my dead uncle. It’s his birthday today.”

And we are thinking it’s the fish he is after.

“They’ve all become fish now. Fish-souls.”

Possible. If their hands were tied by Papon’s policemen, those must have morphed into fins and fishtails by now. A long time has passed since 1961 anyway. Ferdaus’ story walks with us a bit.

From Pont St. Michel we catch up with a lunch appointment with our filmmaker friends who live close by. They love the prestigious location of their apartment, but can’t keep the windows open.

“Too much traffic noise comes in. Besides, the pollution might ruin the paintings we brought in from Maroc. ”

I try to eat the asparagus noiselessly. One slips and falls between my legs. Maurice and Amandine later listen to me recount about old man Ferdaus. Yes, Papon was tried for crime against humanity and there’s a plaque on one of the bridges where the 1961 massacre took place. But tourists are mostly shown the plaque remembering Diana’s crash. After the coffee and truffle chocolate, we step out to traverse the clock’s hands.

The two-toned pavement follows us – sometimes walks past the stinking public lavatories and sometimes races on the Metro. Leaving Café Kleber it peeps at the murals on Line 6, skirts the eateries of Place d’Italie, snorts at Bel-Air and imitates a half moon to arrive back at the 12th arrondissement. It’s evening here. The trout sizzles, the bread sniffs the cheese and the tartes-aux-framboises gently lick the fruit slices on the light pastry. Here old men play petanque in the parks till the monk sun, rule-bound, drapes its dark habit. Purple mamas push prams on the two-toned paths lighted by the neon glow placed over the stone horsemen that invaded Place de la Nation decades ago, the dew-soaked hooves and spurs wrapped in summer poppies.

I go looking for sardines. My studio is small, on the third floor of a structure that has a crêperie downstairs. I can smell Nutella and lemon rinds all day long. I have a double gas-stove where I can pan-fry my sardines, eat them with plain toasts and later have unpasteurized camembert for dessert. Then I can sleep in the harsh cheesy stench – my French friends don’t like to hear that – for it does lull my eyes shut.

The butcher at the fish-and-meat counter in the store wipes his ebony forehead with the soggy apron he seems to have been wearing forever. He is twentyfiveish, six-foot or more in height and of huge arms, of which the right one holds a cleaver in a tight fist. What he asks of me seems an order or contempt. I don’t understand any of his French. He seems upset with my lack of general cognition of things. I want to tell him I want the fish as steaks. My linguistic skill fails. His brow wrinkles up.

As his chocolate sweat falls on the cleaver, I point at the neat rows of gray silken-skinned fish sleeping undeterred by the semi-verbal wrangle going between us. As soon as I decide to resort to English, his massive hands too seem to decide their course of action. He picks and weighs the lot I had been pointing to. Deftly the cleaver splits the silk-and-fine-bone-china forms. He mutters as he labors. But not steaks, he does them into fillets! But how do I stop him…! Do I dare leave it all behind!

The fillets look at me, spilt wide open. They are like the two-toned pavements, at once faint-hued and ruddy. Ribbed on one side, faintly scratched on the other. Invisible veins running on the left and fleshy bumps on the right.

“I need to go home, my shift’s over.” He startles me in slow heavy French.

That’s seems a different accent. What was he saying all this while then? I want to ask but my vocabulary is poor.

“I was trying to guess if you’re from Senegal, my community.”

He wipes his moonlike forehead again with that soiled stinking apron, chucks the cleaver inside a corner sink and washes his hands. I move on to browse the silent fruits rows before I leave.

We step out almost together. He takes the left, I take the right. Our night elongates along the crack of the two-toned pavement, at times stooping a bit to look at a germinal seed, tweak that speck of dust fallen perhaps from an unknown shirt collar that has walked many pavements, or to brush off crumbs from breads so many disparate hands have held and kneaded.

PART II: EMPARKED

I tell her goodbye at the turn of Canon de la Nation. Folks still eat there at 11.30 p.m. Mint tea pours to tingles and trickles. Granny’s golden-white hair and the pup’s coat match, tells the light.

“Say ‘bye’, come on, say it Kiki! Give her your bises!”

The whiskered one doesn’t, instead she whimpers. It is too late for her on the road, so what we remain night walkers. It is another night that has crescented over the road.

But Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine is a special road. Not a fancy road, no Fifth Avenue charm so to say, but a road that has many faces. And in a “two-toned pavement city”, these faces actually serve up more tones one can possibly imagine.

I look at the road first thing from my studio window, which is also a kind of squeeze-in balcony if I don’t mind the cramps after five minutes and have no fear of falling over on the freshly-painted roof of the crêperie below. Facing me, on the other side of the road, a massive wall-space is retained for advertisements that get changed every Monday. So Monday morning is the most exciting time to see this part of my road. The fresh coat, the color, the new slogan – all unroll like a soft crêpe with dazzling fillings.

Afternoons are good too, especially if there’s a rally or a trade union meeting at Bastille. The road then is flotsam and jetsam of figures, placards, little flags and voices. I can watch the fluidity trickle down to Bastille or just plunge inside it to be one with it. One of the tones.

The other time I unveil this road is the night time. The Turkish cafés put on dance music even if it is not the day of ‘Fête de la Musique’. The döner kebab wheel gets rolling, teenagers shout merrily while competing with their friends on roller skates, and wine and laughter mingle freely. Friday nights are rather funny because the police come down to make some money from nabbing errant drivers, beggars with big dogs and occasional troublemakers. They get laughed at and their shiny black boots squeak too much, as if they wore them first time in the whole week.

Earlier in the day I am in Pigalle, to go meet a friend in a North African café. We eat fish, sauce and lemon and drink coarse wine – pretty much in the line of Czesław Milosz’s poetic description – and listen to stories about the policemen barging in every now and then to ‘straighten’ up people on phony charges; at least go away menacing: “You people make too much noise. This is Paris after all…” When is laughing and talking in cafés considered a crime, people here wonder.

“We are marching to Bastille soon,” Fiona says. She is the café owner and the cousin of my friend. “Our kids are always hounded by les flics.”

I can join in, I say. Bastille also has a great weekly market – breads, fruits, cheese and crafts. I already befriended a Vietnamese woman who sells fish there. For some reason although my French is terrible and I don’t look underfed, she always puts an extra one on my pile.

Fiona wants to sing, make videos. It is tough to move with your talent even if you are a citizen.

“It’s the skin my dear!” She exclaims. “A two-tone like you might have it still.”

I smile and tell her about the two-tone pavement image I have of Paris.

“Try it,” Fiona snorts the smoke-filled air wafting to our non-smoking corner. “Walk alone one night. The worst you might have is people ask you about Indian weed.” She also tells me that my “Om” T-shirt can act as a shield.

“Haven’t we all fallen for that sign?”

Well, I like it in the sense that it is an interesting motif. Like a crouched up human, possibly with a snout. We all are crouched up at times. So it cuts a universal image for me.

Later, once I am inside the metro, a beautiful dreadlocked woman appreciates my mirror-set lacquer bangles. I take one off and give it to her. She accepts it gratefully, without any pretense of a protest. Her smile is like a fountain. “Been to Pigalle?” ”Pigalle is a bad place,” she says. “Don’t again go there alone. Not just the police, everybody is a crook there.” The bangle sits pretty on her nimbus wrist. Such things are expensive in this city. But she’s going to Bombay soon to work for a humanitarian agency, for kids who are worse off than those described by her relatives in Africa. Momena speaks slowly, so I get it all.

My meeting with the old lady whom I refer to as granny takes place right after Momena leaves. There is a rapid-fire announcement in the microphone. All I can gather is we need to get down and trudge our way to a connecting bus that’ll take passengers to Line 6 to the final station at Place de la Nation. Most of us at this hour are rugged working class men and women, homeless-looking hobos and hapless tourists like me, the old lady with her suitcase and a pup being an exception. So finding myself marooned at 10 p.m., I cling to the granny with the pup. I offer to carry her case, small but heavy.

I chat with Granny in my gibberish. She seems sixty-plus. Probably cannot see well too. But why the heck is she out now? Granny says she is visiting her daughter. But no one came to pick her up. She doesn’t use a cell. She travels at this weird hour because the daughter comes back from work very late. Issues with the door key etc. The daughter at least doesn’t mind Kiki, the pup. Granny thanks me. I feel sad. She takes the dark tree-lined road behind Canon, I my Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. A man in the shadow of the crêperie casually asks if I’d like mint tea. I pretend not to hear. The two-toned pavement comes up with me into my studio. I open the window and look below.

The night spreads its wings on the pavements on both the sides. An owl hoots in approval.