Living in the 10th
Arrondisement in Paris (France) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
My
Parisian studio apartment required walking up five flights of stairs (excluding
the ground floor). I lived on the sixth
floor of an apartment building built by Baron Haussman in the 10th
arrondisment by the Gare du Nord when I first moved to Paris.
If
I forgot to take the garbage out, I had to do a tiring second walk up and down
the stairs. Carrying groceries upstairs
rated as a mini Stairmaster workout with weights. In addition, the humid heat made sleep
impossible.
My
neighborhood fascinated me, though, so I lived with the inconveniences. I lived in a 19th century
townhouse apartment building similar to the one made famous in the
Impressionist painting entitled Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte that
is exhibited in the Chicago Institute of the Arts.
Many
descendants of Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans from France’s former
colonies in North Africa lived in my neighborhood by the Gare du Nord train
station. I could also easily walk to the
Gare de l’Est train station from my apartment building, too.
On
my way to work, I picked up just as many Arabic words as French ones like
“hamman” for public baths and “halal” designating a Muslim butcher or Muslim
delicatessen.
Only
men shopped at the open-air halal butcher shops with strips of opaque, yellow
plastic dangling fly tape in front of the stores to keep pests away. Fridays were Mosque days, and Muslim men
flooded the streets with butcher shop purchases.
I
witnessed Muslim culture first-hand as I sat by my window, studying French and
hoping for a breeze.
My
neighbors directly across from my apartment over the courtyard followed the
“sharia” and “sunna” or Muslim living practices set forth as law in the Koran
and “hadith”. (Sheer curtains, for
example, separated the men’s living room from the women’s dining room and
kitchen. The couple read the Koran
together in morning and at night sitting at the dining room table.)
(I
studied Islam and Muslim culture as part of my studies of francophone children’s
culture when I studied French children’s literature and francophone children’s
culture at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin.)
Delightful
aromas wafted throughout the courtyard over the car repair garage as women
cooked what I guessed to be lemon-chicken, roast lamb with mint, and grilled
chicken with cumin spice rubs. These
glimpses into Muslim life encouraged me to visit the market at the Barbès-Rocheouart
Métro stop.
The
Métro stop at Barbès-Rocheouart is the epicenter of North African Paris. I noticed that there was a weekly market
under this Métro station and decided to go there.
Maybe
I would even buy some of the ingredients for couscous, North Africa’s signature
dish featuring couscous, a small pasta, that was topped off with a stew made of
spicy chicken or lamb (never pork, which was forbidden by the Koran).
The
market at Barbès-Rocheouart qualifies more as an Arab market, called a souk,
than a Parisian market. The sounds of
Arabic filled the air there with women wearing flowered headscarves looking at
merchandise.
The
merchants sold mysterious things like glazed, clay pots with conical lids
called tagines as well.
Then,
there were bulbous, metal couscousiers featuring a big, round bottom for
cooking a tagine, or stew, that would flavor the couscous pasta sitting in a
perforated tray above the stew.
Dried
figs, dates, almonds, and fruit showed up at several stands. I worked my way to a spice merchant
representing the ultimate Arab legacy to North African cuisine.
The
pungent, freshly ground spices like cayenne used to make fiery, Algerian
harissa sauce tickled my nose. I asked
the merchant what spices I needed to make couscous.
The
spice seller motioned to the small, plastic containers holding golden, ground
ginger; rust-colored turmeric; cinnamon sticks; and garnet-colored threads of
saffron.
“Isn’t
saffron a powder?” I asked.
The
merchant shook his head in dismay.
“Saffron
is collected by hand from a flower,” he said.
He
looked me in the eye and rubbed his fingers together and said, “With saffron
you have to remember to pinch the threads between your fingers to release their
perfume as you drop them into a liquid to boil,” he said.
I
chickened out on making couscous.
I
told the spice merchant, “My culinary skills at the moment are limited to
pasta, frying breaded fish sticks, making instant mashed potatoes, and making salad.”
I
did buy some pepper, which I knew how to use.
The merchant made a little paper cone for the pepper and gave it to me
to take home on the Métro like a real power shopper.
(A
much shorter version of this story appeared in the Side Dish column in the
Monterey County Weekly around 2000 – Circulation: 200,000)
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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