2002, Paris, France

By Simone Santini

Now that I am standing here, waiting for Justice Atkinson to speak, I feel the urge to tell somebody the story of these days in Paris, of my mission, of the inevitability of its final outcome, and of the events that have brought me here today, in this room where I will meet my destiny. I seek no justification, for I know that I will find none; I offer no explanation, for every explanation would now sound superfluous and offensive. I hope I will encounter the embryo of an understanding.

Two months ago exactly, at about this time, I arrived at the Gare d’Austerlitz for what was going to be my last visit to Paris. My mission: to find Ali Barghouti. I won’t insult you by telling you who Ali Barghouti is; if you are here, if you are reading the symbols that I am threading, you know this name only too well. I mention it only to make you fully understand the importance and the delicacy of my mission.

I had flown directly from Virginia, where I live and work, a work that I’d rather not describe in detail; suffice it to say that I am a public servant. I had been in Paris many times before. Eons ago, in a different and simpler life, I had even lived here, as a student, in a small attic, cold and drafty, Parisian enough to make me feel like a Henri Miller figurine in search of a personal (and impossible) Bohème. Little did I know then that one day I would have returned under such circumstances.

That Wednesday at the Gare d’Austerlitz was one of those days when Paris seems to shine, to live more intensely: the sky was of a deep blue, the young girls around me were wearing their lighter, more colorful clothes. One could almost believe that death did not exist.

I was later to know that that same day, at that same time, Ali Barghouti was also at the Gare d’Austerlitz. I didn’t see him. I often wondered what would have happened had I seen him. Maybe the events would have taken a completely different path, maybe they wouldn’t have. But I didn’t see him, and all my alternative hypotheses are just spent possibilities that never materialized, alternative universes that were never to be.

Justice Atkinson says something. I don’t know what. It doesn’t matter anyway. I answer “yes,” without really knowing why. The answer must have been correct, since everybody is looking at me gravely, but without the surprise or the alarm that would surely follow a wrong answer. Somebody is talking. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore. What was to be done has been done. What I am seeing here, now, doesn’t concern me anymore. I can’t stop it from happening, and I wouldn’t if I could.

I took a room in a little Hotel in Montmartre, one of those places that make up in romantic reverie what they lack in the way of convenience: the entrance announced only by a small plaque on an anonymous door, tiny rooms, just dirty enough to make one notice, and the bathroom down the hall.

Mme Didier, the hotel keeper, gave me an inquisitive look, as if trying to figure out whether I was renting the room with some illicit or immoral purpose, and clearly hoping so. From the few sibylline words of disappointment with which she concluded her rapid but penetrating exam, she must have concluded that I wasn’t up to anything of the kind. I often wonder what she would have done had she known the reason of my visit to Paris.

The first week of my sojourn was fruitless and restless. I spent most of it in crowded cafés, reading Le Monde like the most inconspicuous Parisian.

The world didn’t seem to be in better or worse shape than it had been for the whole course of human history. The Middle East was on the brink of collapse, murders were up, marriages were down, the market was oscillating, racial intolerance was in its eternal raise. I thought, with a cold amusement, that my mission was at least going to have an influence, however small, on some of those figures.

When I wasn’t sitting in cafés, or trying to conjure up some of my old contacts to receive fresh news of Ali – finding out with disappointment that it was no longer necessary to walk dark alleys or solitary quais in order to find a contact; all the crooks in Paris were easily reachable by cell phone – I spent hours in Montmartre, amidst the crowd of painters, musicians, and prostitutes, or walking through the Latin quarter, trying vainly to recognize myself in these students I saw walking around.

How impressively young were they, how impossibly careless! Had I really, at one time, been like them? Was I really, like them, spending my days discussing Foucault, Marx, and modern Jazz, and my nights drinking cheap wine and consummating frenetic sexual encounters? Why did these things seem so irrelevant now?

The justice has said something to the witnesses. They answered. I don’t know what. Why are they all looking at me? Should I have said something? It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.

Finally, after many days spent in agonizing wait, I saw him. I was descending from the RER train that takes the Banlieusards to their jobs in Paris, and I saw him on the platform, trying to buy Liberation with a 500 Euros note.

He didn’t see me, busy as he was trying to explain to an increasingly angry newspaperman that he didn’t have anything in a smaller denomination. I started following him. I followed him the whole, interminable span of that final day.

He went straight to what I assumed was his pied-à-tèrre in the city, a small apartment on the rive gauche, not two blocks from the Seine. I prepared myself for a long wait. I sat in a bistro on the other side of the street and ordered a glass of wine. As it turned out, the wine went wasted, because Ali remained in his apartment less than five minutes.

He took the metro to a station in Les Halles. I almost lost him when he got out unexpectedly a few second before the doors closed, but I am faster than he imagined any likely follower would be. He entered into a travel agency. Through the window, I could see him talking to the young girl at the counter; she talked, smiled at him, and finally handed him a thick envelope that looked like it could contain airplane tickets.

When he left, I entered and, with an excuse, I induced her to tell me where he was going. I wasn’t surprised hearing that he had bought two tickets to Brazil.

I followed him in the square in front of the Beaubourg, the disorienting, inhuman postmodern cathedral. I saw the veins of its escalators, which carry the crowds like virgins to the sacrificial meeting with the monster; I saw the obscene, hot, exposed breath of its climatizers.

Ali had lunch in a little bistro in the square. I watched him eat from a distance. I was not hungry. I had almost no sensation in my body, only the omnipresent, pervasive idea that my mission was going to be accomplished that day.

Finally, in the evening, in Place de la Concorde, he saw me. He turned around suddenly, and I was too slow to hide from his view. I could have expected any reaction from him, but I didn’t expect the sad smile, the tired face with which he looked at me.

At that moment, I understood: chasing and being chased are two faces of the same coin. The predator and the prey are, always, the same person. When I was frustrated, so was he; when I wanted that chase to be over, so did he, although he knew very well what the consequences would be.

We didn’t say anything, but we kept staring at each other for a while, while I had the impression that time had come to a standstill, that this is was the umbilicus mundi of my (no: of our) life, that this moment defined us forever and that, after this, nothing could be real anymore.

The square was completely deserted, his silhouette was black against the red of the sky. There was no time to waste. I did what I had to do.

The justice is talking to me. I know I should say something. What? I am not sure. I think. I know I must remember. I think again. What would my students say? A teacher out of words. Finally, I seem to remember. I open my mouth. I start talking: “I, Janet, take thee, Ali, as my lawfully wedded husband….”

Simone Santini is a professor of computing and a part time freelance columnist and writer. His articles and stories have appeared mostly on regional Californian and Italian newspapers and magazines. He currently lives and works in Madrid, Spain. The names and gender of the two main characters have been changed.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, April 27th, 2007 | Email This Post

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