Inspired by Paris

The woman of letters Miss Falak Tarazi has left us for France, where she will stay for some time, acquainting herself with the features of life in Europe. She has kept her promise to The Woman's Voice and sent us the first of her letters. There is no doubt that our readers will find in this letter, and in the letters that follow it, a new color of freshness, pleasure, and profit in great measure.

To speak of Paris is to speak of life itself in all the variety of its faces and branches, its forms and its meanings. Like life, it seldom ends at any definite point, and seldom begins at a definite point either. Its beginning may be at the beginning; it may be at the middle point; just as its end may come at any point — save one, whose name is "the end." For there is no such thing as "the end" in a city whose bounds have embraced the entire universe, and whose quarters have gathered up its loftiest meanings and its basest. Whoever claims that Paris is the city of frivolity errs utterly! Perhaps the expression has misled such people, so that they confuse gaiety with frivolity — and what a difference between the two! For Paris is as far as can be from frivolity; it is, rather, the city of earnestness — earnestness in its widest and most spacious meanings. Even gaiety, in this city, takes an earnest form, because Paris stands in the utmost need of it.

And need, for a human being, is ever earnestness through and through. A glance, however fleeting, at the faces one meets, whether in the Métro or on the bus or anywhere else, tells one that the life of these people is summed up at this moment in a few words: unremitting, continuous toil for the sake of life; ceaseless struggle to obtain bread merely to hold on to safety; struggle to fight off hunger, helplessness, and death. Such is the life of the toilers and strugglers of Paris, earnest in their toil and their struggle — those who eat their bread by the sweat of their brow; and God knows they are many.

The thing that truly arrests attention in Paris is the role of woman at this perilous stage of its history — Paris's, that is — and her direct, practical entry into the various fields of life as a working member of society, toiling and struggling for her daily bread exactly as the man does. This great multitude of women whom you come upon, whether as you go down the stairways of the Métro — one of the wonders of Paris — or as you climb them, or as you round the "endless" turns and bends that connect you with the line that carries you to your destination — these women catch your eye by their earnestness, their haste, their simple dress — which is as far as can be from the appearances of elegance and finery — and by those burdens they carry, now in their hands, now on their backs. You may happen to see a girl whose weight does not reach fifty kilos loaded with burdens that may weigh more than twenty. And yet despite all this, and despite the burdens of every kind that the French woman bears — especially she who belongs to the popular classes — her nature has managed, under the rule of necessity, to grow familiar with this kind of life and to school herself to it; for the harsh and mighty trials she passed through during this war have taught her to overcome every weakness that might take hold of her by reason of the hardships she meets; for to give way to weakness and dependence might bring down calamities upon her, of which hunger would be the beginning, and degradation and the fatal misstep the end. (I shall speak in another article of this side of Paris life.) And that is because present conditions in Paris

leave every human being entrusted to himself; you will inevitably perish unless you manage your own affair by relying on yourself. And the trouble of it is that you perish without anyone knowing of you, and without anyone turning to look at you. What a mighty examination of the individual it is, laying bare his deepest depths and his most hidden secrets, bringing out his virtues, just as it exposes — openly and scandalously — his vices and his faults. Among these vices, which the excess of the French in giving themselves over to this life of individualism has laid bare, is the chaos of living conditions spread through the country, arising from the disorder of the market and the failure to organize it in a form that might create some stability in this living, and some peace of mind in the souls of those who have no wish to plunge into the black market. The prices of food and necessities, for instance, are not applied at a single rate even in the restaurants and commercial houses classed as first-rate. Each of these restaurants and shops imposes on its customers the price it deems suited to its own interest alone, throwing every other economic and social consideration to the winds. And here is another example of this chaos: the government imposed upon the whole market a reduction of 10 percent. What did the second-class restaurants do in the face of this decree? Instead of complying with this order of the government, they resorted to a cunning trick, and increased their receipts by 10 percent instead of reducing them by 10 percent. The gist of the trick is this: the proprietresses of these restaurants (most of them, in Paris and some of the suburbs, are run by women) announced the reduction both on the doors of their restaurants and at the head of the card that bears the names of the dishes with their prices beside them. But they deliberately omitted to mention the 10 percent set aside for service. So when the time of reckoning comes and you set about paying for the meal, the serving woman demands the "service" of you — although those who wait upon the restaurant are its own proprietresses; and you then discover that the price you paid for this meal exceeded its basic price by 10 percent.

Among these vices, too, is a great one, conspicuous today in most of them: the loss of the sense of the group, or, to speak more exactly, the loss of the social sense — that noble sense which settles in every individual the conviction that he is of society and for it. Every individual here lives for himself alone, as though he were saying: after me, the deluge. The trace of the Frenchmen's swerving toward this dangerous side of life is plain and evident in most of their doings and in the several departments of their life — political, literary, and social. Every Frenchman insists on having his own particular opinion in politics, in letters, and in social matters. And he is quick to change the direction of that opinion the moment it becomes clear to him that there is a group of people who also hold that opinion or one like it. Hence arose those parties and political and other institutions in France whose number cannot be counted.

The nature of some of the French resembles their local climate — that is, it is in constant change and transformation. Hardly do you go out for a stroll, fully assured that fair skies are the weather that will keep that day company, before the sky surprises you with its clouds and its lightning and its thunder and its rains, which set about pelting you with their sweeping torrents — and it may go on for hours in this fashion.

Paris, 28/7/1947