I have a couple of newsletters in the works, but as I was felled by my third flu-ish deal of the season, and was either in bed or anyway wiling away in a state of shivering exhaustion for most of last week, I haven’t been able to polish those newsletters enough to send ‘em out yet.
So you’re getting an Extra! Extra! Read All about It! Kind of newsletter today, hot off the presses. The “presses” being my life.
Les Examens, The Exams:
I got up about a half-hour before dawn this morning to prepare for an appointment in town. Just after 8 AM, in the clear morning air on a tree-lined street, I joined a line of fellow foreigners outside the OFII (Office Français de L’Immigration et de L’Integration). We had to wait fifteen minutes or so until the doors opened.
There was a young guy at the head of the line who constantly looked around curiously at everyone. (Hey, that’s my job!). We were in the same cohort who’d be taking French exams and getting an overview of civics lessons. Within an hour or two, I’d find out that this young guy was Pashtun, when he asked if there were any official materials translated into Pashto. (There weren’t).
There was also a Serbian woman with dyed blonde hair, a man from Togo, some women from West Africa and the Middle East, and one other American, a young biracial woman with braids whose French husband waited in line with her. She told me they’d met in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she’s from, when he was studying there, and they got married six months ago. She lives in Lille, and is generally happy, but said that she’s not sure about the weather. “Ditto,” I said.
Around the world, offices like these, places where you take civics courses and sign documents and take language exams, have the same look. Low ceilings, linoleum floors, vaguely harsh overheard lighting, chairs with tiny desks attached upon which you take your exams. A cramped but not altogether unfriendly air.
After getting scanned for weapons (unusual in this country), and on my way into the classroom, I was asked by an employee, a 30-something guy: “Est-ce que vous lisez le Français?” (“Do you read French?”). If he had said, “Est-que tu peux lire le Français?” — the informal form, the one I’m familiar with — I would have said, “Oui.” But I hesitated slightly, having never heard the word “lisez” before, and he quickly said, “I guess you don’t, then,” with a quick sigh and handed me materials to read in English.
(Actually, I think he said “Est-ce que vous pouvez lisez le Français?” which I think is incorrect, but he may have been foreign-born like me).
“Lisez…” I thought to myself as I took my seat, and then realized it was the formal command version of “lire,” so I could have said “yes.” How quickly people decide my level of French is low! But despite his slight surliness, I was grateful the materials were in English, since they were to do with civic life and the rule of law and other things much easier to suss out in my native language. On the wall, there was a poster: “Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen 1789.” The Rights of Man and Citizens. Et les droits de la femme? Not worth including? Okay. I’ll have the usual, I guess!
Most of the rest of my story about how this morning went, is above, in audio form.
If you don’t want to hear the details: apparently I can do well on a written exam in French, and can also do well in an oral interview — enough that they waived the need for me to take French classes — but since I haven’t taken much formal French, I have surprisingly gaps in my knowledge. I can read about different sectors of industry and employment numbers, but I don’t know the word for “weekday,” for example.
*In the audio note, I say that one of the employees told me that my French level is “grand” [sic], but Google is suggesting that that word may not often be used for language levels… I don’t know why she used that word!
I forgot to mention in my audio note that after I got the phone call telling me to return ASAP — while I was having what turned out to be a premature coffee and decompression session, oops — the West African security officer chided me when I ran back in. “You weren’t supposed to leave! I went out into the street looking everywhere for you!”
And then, when I was signing some documents, the employee tending to my paperwork said the French equivalent of: “Now don’t be running away again, now! You can’t leave yet!”
She made that joke a few times. Which: fair enough. Ironic that I was basking in having passed my French exams, and then it turned out I’d also misunderstood some basic instructions.
Such is my chaotic level of French, since I’ve only ever taken one year of it formally!
The Free Woman God:
Here is a short piece I wrote on today’s date, March 10th, 2009, while working in public schools in Japan. I randomly found it a couple of years ago and I read it aloud here:
Seen and Overheard:
Note: these “Seen and Overheard”s are from a couple of months back, but I never published them until today.
1 On a Friday afternoon, two white men in a white truck drop off my couch, which is in pieces in separate boxes, waiting to be assembled.
One of the men, with whom I’d talked briefly by phone beforehand, is slightly friendly, sitting in the driver’s seat of the delivery truck.
The other one, milk white and doughy with a pinched face, a buzzcut, and a Nazi air, is not friendly whatsoever. He’s about 23, 24, and VERY ANGRY. He unloads the boxes containing pieces of my couch VERY ANGRILY.
When I hold the door open for him to come into my apartment building foyer, he doesn’t acknowledge me at all. No “thank you,” no smile or look at all. He’s almost comically cold and a bit scary but I keep holding the door open as he moves all the pieces in one-by-one, and tell myself to try not to take it personally, even when people don’t treat me like a person.
When I try to explain to him how wide the elevator is before we reach it, so we can figure out how to get everything up, he ignores me entirely as if I haven’t spoken at all.
As we share the elevator up, which is only about 4 feet wide, he holds his body wildly still, as if he’s terrified of moving any muscle a centimeter. It seems like he’s roiling beneath the surface. The elevator’s tiny, so with the boxes in it we’re only a few inches from one another. The twenty-second ride feels longer.
When I sign for the couch at the end, completing the delivery, he’s suddenly, briefly, more friendly as he explains where to sign in a surprising singsong voice.
I’m happy when he leaves.
3. A couple of hours later, the couch-assembly crew sent by the furniture store arrive. I’ve paid them ahead of time. One, Ahmed, I texted with earlier in the week to arrange the visit.
When I open the door and let Ahmed in, he’s tall and smiling.
He gestures to the man behind him. “The two of us will be assembling the couch together this evening. This is Ahmed,” he says. “Yes,” he laughs, “we’re two Ahmeds.”
Ahmed the Second has dark dramatic features, like a 48-year-old Charlie Chaplin, and a jovial air. He has a more scholarly look than Ahmed the First, and wears thick black-rimmed glasses.
They’re respectful as they quietly work in my apartment. I cook up some sautéed spinach with garlic since it’s my dinnertime. I offer them coffee and water. Ahmed the First says a quick “No” on behalf of them both, but I sense that Ahmed the Second would like some, so I ask him directly, and he readily asks for coffee.
They speak French together as they work, murmuring quietly, hunched over the assembly directions. They speak another language, too, which is maybe in the family of Arabic but I’m not sure.
I can’t place it.
Ahmed the Second tells me that my paintings, leaning against the wall, are beautiful.
I ask them if they want more light to work by, and Ahmed #1 makes fun of my lamp. “Yes, that’s the lamp of an artist, all right. Not much in the way of giving light! But it looks very cool!” He says this altogether kindly, not mockingly.
The assembly takes about two hours, since it’s a couch with a convertible bed with endless screws and parts. I bought it so I can have friends visit. (If you are my friend and are reading this, please visit!).
I asked Ahmed the Second, in French, “Are you an engineer?” because he seems to have an aptitude for mechanical stuff, and often points out when his co-assembler has missed something.
“Almost…” he says in French (“presque”), and laughs and shakes his head.
And then a minute later he says, in French: “I can’t speak English,” as a way to cut off that particular conversation.
“But I was speaking French, not English…,” I say, and he laughs.
I’m not sure what the joke is supposed to be.
I recall speaking with people in Japan sometimes, who’d ask me, AFTER we’d conversed for minutes on end in Japanese, “So…do you speak Japanese?” as a genuine question, even though that was the only language we had been conversing in. I think they thought that with my face, the only language we could have been conversing in was English.
It was amazing to me, this disconnect, and it happened a few times.
Back to Ahmed and Ahmed. I put on some music to make the whole process more enjoyable. Ahmed the First insists that I put on French music, while Ahmed the Second makes a joke about loving Phil Collins.
They’re just pure courteousness. Before they leave, I ask what the other language they were speaking was, amidst their French.
“Arabic,” Ahmed says.
“But it was a little different from Arabic….,” I say.
He laughs. “Yes, it was Berber. That’s what we are.”
I tell him I know a little about Berber culture, having been in Morocco ten years ago. They ask which cities I visited, I tell them the four names of the cities, and they express approval.
But I was not treated at all kindly, while traveling solo as a woman in Morocco. Actually, out of the 39 countries I’ve visited, I’ve never been so unsafe. Many men followed me around, harassing me and making lewd gestures and sounds, or trying to bully me out of money, or even, once, cornering me in an alley until I screamed bloody murder to get them to leave me alone. It was a nightmare. That kind of thing happened on the days I didn’t have my co-travelers, David and Zakaris, walking alongside me. When they were there, all was tranquil and no one gave me a second glance.
When I walked around with my friend Salma, who is herself a local from Marrakech, we were harassed constantly, the first time within minutes of our meeting up. She told me that she hated living like this, that it was exhausting and demoralizing and enraging. (She lives abroad now).
When I’ve told these stories to people, most people have believed me, but occasionally some people haven’t. They suggest it didn’t happen, or it wasn’t that bad. But it did happen, regardless if people want to hear about it or not. And it’s not okay.
Back in Astoria, Queens, I had a much nicer interaction with a Berber man who runs a photography studio. He shared his mother’s home-baked cookies with me and showed me books of his photography from the Atlas Mountains.
Anyway, when the couch has been assembled and Ahmed and Ahmed are leaving, I take out a tip, or “pourboire” (“drinking money). But the first Ahmed says he won’t hear of taking it, and tells me on the way out that he also does house painting and repairs if I ever need his services again
I’m grateful that they were both so kind. The picture of courtesy.
2 Browsing a chain franchise called Boulanger, which sells all manner of household products in a delightful one-stop shop, I spy an “electronic de-piller” which is one of my favorite tools. It has a spinny blade thing, and with it, you can make old sweaters and coats look like new. I pounce on one.
A minute or two later, a young woman approaches me and excitedly says in French, “Excuse me! I just saw you’re carrying around a de-piller. Would you mind sharing where you found it?!”
I point her in the direction of a pyramid of de-pillers, and through seeing her giddiness, know that I’ve just found a kindred spirit. Someone who also loves de-pilling their old sweaters. We are economical and tidy, and we are legion! (maybe)
A half-hour later, I see her again a street away. My French isn’t good enough to say: “Aren’t these the best things?” so instead I just smile at her before she mounts her bicycle to ride off.
Kindred spirits!
Fin
Okay, c’est tout (that’s all) for now, I think. Except, last thing: usually I do paintings in one session, but this was session two (of what’ll probably be three) for this scene in SoHo in gouache paint. Looks pretty good, I think! It’ll be for sale when it’s done, so if you’re potentially interested, let me know by commenting or by emailing studio @ coyneworks dot com.
À bientôt! I hope you understand whatever languages you need to understand today, and don’t miss any vital directions like I did!
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