I got back from Calais last night. So now I know, Calais is not the best place to visit if you want to work on your tan. Beach + summer does not necessarily equal nice sunny weather, as Scandinavia should have taught me. However, Calais is the best place I know of for shopping. Last week was the beginning of the bi-annual country-wide sales. I have only ever experienced the soldes in Paris, where they’re the French equivalent of Black Friday. You can buy a new outfit with a handful of coins but you have to fight your way through crowds of sweaty people and then spend sometimes over an hour in line. But in Calais it’s very civilized. I finally found non-leather sandals. They were so cheap that I bought two pairs. Everything in the store was half off and yet, there was space for me to try the sandals on and walk around, and then there was no line and when we went to pay for them. I felt like there had just been a plague and we were making the best of it.
Actually, Calais isn’t completely civilized. I had always heard that the French police were racist, especially in the northern fringes of the country. Is it racist to call French police racist? Maybe, but I believe it. Like anyone who has ever taken a French cinema class I’ve seen Welcome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoRqzMGBU4U). I know about the refugees from Iraq who walked all the way to Calais and are stuck there until they can find a way to cross the channel and start new live in England. I know that the city has been inhospitable to these refugees to say the least.
My train arrived before Ader’s and I was sitting in the station waiting for him. I saw a guy go up to the window and ask for a ticket in English. I couldn’t really hear the exchange but for whatever reason the lady behind the counter didn’t sell him the ticket. Looking defeated the guy came and sat next to me. No less than five minutes later the police came, a whole troop of them with guns and those stick they beat rioters with hanging from their belts. This is in response to one guy who probably weighs less than I do quietly sitting in a bench in a train station minding his own business. The police asked him for his papers. He pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to one of the officers who examined it and passed it to another officer. They all took a look at this poor guy’s papers. What seemed like was happening was that the police were realizing that despite appearances this guy was in France legally and now they looked a bit foolish. There was whispering among the police and then one of them grabs the guy roughly by the arms and says in French that they’re going to search him. Like this was some kind of airport.
If I had any balls I would have given the police a piece of my mind. Really though, what would that have accomplished? Excusez-nous, Mademoiselle. Vous avez raison, on le laisse tranquille? Unlikely. Plus I really wasn’t up for another discussion about why my carte de séjour was expired. Still, I stared as the police patted him down in the middle of the train station hoping I could shame them into stopping if they realized I was paying attention and was going to blog about this later. It didn’t work. And I was the only one even looking! No one else seemed to think that there was anything unjust or even unusual about what was going on.
I should say that I know there are French people who are as appalled as I am by this kind of discrimination even if they are, in certain regions, a minority. Discrimination seems a more accurate term for it than racism. Because I really do think it’s true that you can be any color and accepted by French society...as long as you assimilate. If the guy at the train station had shaved his beard, changed into a suit, and spoken French the police wouldn’t have been there. While I do think that a certain amount of adapting to their new country is a reasonable expectation of immigrants, I don’t think that you should have to completely abandon your original cultural identity to avoid police harassment. Okay, I’m digressing.
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