Pink T-shirt and Bright Green Trousers

And so begins the second month of life in downtown Aix-en-Provence, amidst the hustle and bustle of people in a rush, vibrating cell phones, beeps of cashier machines, yells of market venders, the splish-splash of ancient water fountains, deep groans of the faithful old bell in the bell-tower under construction...invisible, monotonous, obscure to the local villager. Here, ignored for so long that they become unseen, are the relics of history, of the blood of martyrs; the fragrance of philosophers, idealists, dreamers, kings, queens, and artists fighting to paint into being each of their dreams in an oblivious reality. Nobody notices the ground, that hellish piece of grey below, contaminated with decaying fish guts and putrifying flesh of cows and discoloured rotting spinach.


Half-an-hour away, in France's port capital, Marseille, the oldest and most diverse city in France, nobody notices the ground either, neither the Algerian immigrants nor the chubby Muslim man selling his deathly sweet Tunisian pastry. This afternoon, the weather decided to surprise us and began splattering us with a confetti of rain - rain on your wedding day. The group of us decided to stop off at the Tunisian bakery and find shelter. As I waited for the others to enter, I peered through the glass window at chewy pink powdered cubes, ginormous coconut macaroons with bright red cherries on top, thick orange webs of sticky fried dough, diamonds of baclavas, chunky brown almond cakes...mum, voila the new Harrods of Tunisien pastry.

a gentle tug at the hem of my dress 

I lurched back in self-defense, certain a cursed thief had been slitting a hole in my pink fluorescent bag.


She leaned lazily against the window, dressed in a tiny pink t-shirt and bright green cotton trousers. Mud, dust and dirt embellished her little tanned cheeks, her cherry-sized lips cracked. Her eyes caught mine: eyes so pitiful, so fearful, so beautiful. I looked at her for a long time. Long black eyelashes fluttered like butterflies' wings; two thin furry caterpillars above her eyelids wrinkled and dipped away from each other to form an upside down "V." She turned to peer through the window, her tiny fingers wrapped around the sides of her head. She looked at me and pointed to the chunky brown almond cakes, mumbling inaudibly.


"Tu veux quoi?" I leaned towards her to ask her what she wanted.
"Ça." She pointed again to the cake behind the glass now steaming up, as more people entered and the confetti of rain turned into a fridge.
"D'accord." I opened the shop door and looked at her. She stood upright, fear turning into hope. Where were her parents? I wondered.
"Ou sont tes parents?"
"Ils ne sont pas la," came the squeaky reply. Perfect answer - vague as a black dot on white canvas.


The others were inside, waiting for me. I looked at her for the last time, before I swallowed, looked down, and went in. The chubby waiter in a white coat came over with a tiny ceramic plate and metal tongs, ready to capture my pastry at the point of a finger. I walked over to the brown almond cakes and caught her leaning against the glass door. The sky was falling, white clouds greying like Benjamin Button's hair. She was still waiting.


"I never give anything to them. It's all a scam."
"I just wish I could do something to help them in the long-term."
"I saw him smoking."
"I was gonna buy something for her too."
"They usually get fed."
"I would buy her something healthier."


I didn't know whether to leave immediately with the cake, or if it was impolite, or if I seemed like a goody-two-shoes to my friends. The chubby waiter stood opposite me, watching me as I picked at my coconut macaroon, pride and shame dueling inside my head, my heart cascading down Niagara Falls.


"The time it takes us to debate whether or not it's a scam, or how or if we can do anything long-term, or what they're going to spend the money on...a hungry person might have died..." I piped up, as I choked on my coconut macaroon, always arguing against everybody else, alone with my own little convictions, Miss Goody Two Shoes.


Silence. "...Or something," I added.


As hard as it was to move during the awkward silence, I decided to let the talkers talk. I wrapped the brown almond cake in some tissue, pushed my chair back as it scraped the colourful mosaic below with a screech, and stepped outside. A gust of wind blew my head to the right. Nobody. I forced my head to the left. Nobody. With a sigh of guilt and defeat, I returned to the table and looked at the cubes and oblongs and coconut macaroons and glazed cherries. Just a little too late.


"She wasn't there?"


I couldn't cry in a Tunisian restaurant. (I couldn't cry in a restaurant, period. With the exception of Chinese restaurants when the food is...) But the clouds seemed to understand. Their tears slid off black, brown, pink, green, red, blue, black, white, and stained the streets, hanging mini-Christmas lights outside shop windows and dropping pearls on peony petals.


With my unfinished coconut macaroon and untouched brown almond cake, I stepped out into the rain, looking for her one last time. She had disappeared. Nobody had noticed her, this girl who lives off the ground and who lives on the ground. I saw her fear turn into hope when I had said "d'accord" and agreed to buy her a cake. I witnessed her patience for that piece of almond cake. But I didn't see her disappointment.


In downtown Aix-en-Provence, in Marseille, in big bustling cities, in concrete jungles of shooting skyscrapers populated by caffeinated robots, inside the trains worming through underground tunnels populated by wide-eyed corpses, in every street where obese elbows rub together and elephant legs jostle and shuffle, where the morning newspaper tumbles from a pot belly and hairy swollen fingers and hovers unrecycled without destiny...where are the human beings?


Where are they, the sculptor's masterpieces, princes and princesses of his glorious breathtaking eternal kingdom where unconditional love, undeniable truth, and unabandoned grace reign? Where are they, the human beings to whom He gave not simply a skeleton but a heart, a soul, the breath of Life? To whom He gave freely what was never deserved, for whom His hands and feet were pierced, veins bursting, nerves splitting, bones shattering, knives through flesh? Where is the giving of what is not deserved? Where is Love?


Have we forgotten that nothing makes us more deserving of that brown almond cake than the little girl with muddy cheeks? Have our brains stolen our hearts? Have our desires for wealth, sex, and glory overtaken us so deeply that we have lost our souls along with our dignity, our virginity, and our identity?  I refuse to believe it. I just refuse to believe it.


Maybe I'm a dreamer in an oblivious reality. Or maybe, there's hope.




*****
Afterthoughts


1) For all the sans-abris ("without-shelter") out there:


"In the shelter of your presence you hide them from the intrigues of men; 
in your dwelling you keep them safe from accusing tongues." Psalm 31:20


2) If it rains on your wedding day, it's not bad luck. True love beats rain any day. Especially, one would hope, on your wedding day. That said, I hope to get married under the sun, which could be anywhere - even Antarctica. But I digress.  


3) French dressing, albeit scrumptious, is in fact not French. I cannot find it anywhere, not even the local Monoprix.


4) I finally bought one of those naked grilled chickens spinning on a metal pole at the Halal boucherie. The poor thing was the last one there, alone in the infernal oven, before I saved it for 5,50 euros...and shredded it for my salad dinner.

Sociology 101

If there was anything that I should have remembered from Sociology 102 but did not, it was that every puny little social bubble has its own set of rules, customs, and vocabulary. If there is anything that I should learn about life in a foreign country, it's that at the end of the day, you've just got to laugh.


La Banque 
I won a 130 euro scholarship from the Wellesley Club of France to learn something about French culture. The president gave the check to me during an evening of fine wine and triangular sandwiches, and spring rolls fried by a French-speaking Asian maid. Two days ago, I went to BNP Paribas to deposit the check into my new French bank account (every student in the program gets one).


I was met with a long line of crying babies, dusty construction workers, mismatched colours, and white hair. But not before long, it was my turn. I was about to open my mouth when I felt a poke against my waist - it tickled. I fidgeted and looked behind me - nothing. But the poke continued. A loud whisper echoed behind my shoulder, and I turned around again. This time, I looked down and found the culprit: a hunched-back old lady with a bright red raincoat and a smattering of white hair on a pink balding head. 


"I'm sorry, but I just want to ask for a name." Translated: Let me go first. 


Nostrils flaring and avoiding eye contact, I said, "O.K." and lazily extended my hand towards the cashier. The old dame noticed my annoyance and cowered back behind me. "No, go ahead," I reply, "allez-y." She shakes her head with a fake smile. I repeat, "non, allez-y." "Are you sure?" she asks. "OUI."


She shuffles up to the counter and starts telling the cashier that she has a rendez-vous at 5PM. The lady behind the desk gives me a nod and a knowing smile before leaving her desk to find the name the old lady had mumbled inside naked gums. Twenty minutes later, the old lady shuffled away into the rain.


This time, another old lady manouvered in front of me, whistling a self-composed melody. But the lady at the desk told her that I had been waiting for a long time. "Oh," she replied, turning her head towards me. I stepped up to the counter and took centre stage, while the jukebox continued to play its unknown tune.


It turned out that all I needed to do to deposit a check was sign the back, stick it in a sealable envelope, and throw it in the check deposit under the green-and-white sign saying: "Cheques Express."             


La Boucherie
I have decided to buy my meat from a Halal butcher on Rue Cordeliers, a 7-minute walk (or a 3-minute run) from where I live. Their meat tends to be cleaner, they're willing to mince it for me, and they don't sell pork. The girls from last semester told me how to say "minced" in French (hachée), and I was set to go.    


On the same day as the banking incident, I visited this hole-in-the-wall to buy some minced chicken meat. Mum had divulged her famous chicken meatball soup, and I was impatient to try it out. Besides, I hadn't eaten meat for days. I was welcomed by the herbal aroma of greasy grilled chicken, endlessly spinning on a skinny metal stick. I resisted.


The butcher, the skinniest butcher I've ever seen, had his black NY beanie on as always. He was speaking to a chubby gentleman with a white moustache, when I interrupted. 


"Would you by any chance have minced chicken meat?" 
"How much?"
"Errm...200 grams?"
"We don't do that here. (He pointed to the neatly cut chicken breasts on fake plastic grass). How many pieces of chicken do you want?"
"Oh...errm...three?"
"Okay, you want them minced?"
"Yes? Please?"


Apparently, I had to tell him how many pieces of chicken breast I wanted minced. Buying minced chicken meat is different from buying minced beef, because I had asked for 200 grams of minced beef last time and he had said, "Bon."


During the 2-minute wait for my chicken breasts to become minced chicken, the chubby gentleman forked up a conversation with me that went like this:
"You can chop the chicken into pieces too."
"Oh, okay."
"You don't know how to chop chicken?"
 "No."
Pause.
"Are you Irish?"
"What?"
"Are you Irish?"
"What?"


I thought I had heard wrong. Had he said "Japanese?" He continued:


"Korean?"
"No."
"Chinese?"
"OUI." Nervous giggle.
"Oh, you don't look Chinese. You're much taller."
"Oh!" Laughter, in total disbelief.


Monoprix 
It was a very busy evening at Monoprix, filled from wall to wall with its usual symphony of monotonous rhythmic beeps, cell phone vibrations, text message melodies, and the hum of shoppers' chatter. I looked for a check-out with the least number of people, but then found a handsome young cashier at check-out #1. 


I decided to use my new debit card: Carte Bleue. Not to show off, but because I didn't have enough cash. He turned and announced the amount; I gave him my Monoprix card (carte de fidélité) and my debit card. Then he gave my debit card back to me and pointed to the little gray machine with colorful buttons under my chin. 


"Oh." I swiped the card - nothing.
"You stick it up."
"Oh." I stuck the card up and then pulled it out immediately.
"No, all the way to the end and keep it there."
"Oh."  This time it worked, and I followed the instructions on the neon green screen. Meanwhile, the handsome young man exchanged glances and corner-of-the-lip smiles with the blond teenager behind me, whose eyes were bigger than my nose and bluer than the sky.

Full-stop

Concrete jungles of skyscrapers and Times Squares overwhelm me. I find them oppressive despite the material freedom of retail therapy, dark despite the myriad neon lights, an eyesore despite the quirky design. And, they block out the sun.

Mountains are a different story:

The bus jolted and threw me in the air like a pancake on Shrove Tuesday. My head scraped the scratched plastic window, setting off a deafening alarm in my right ear. My stubby nose banged the balding head in front of me and smelt grease. The sky turned green and furry, the grass a melange of grays. Thus began the teeth-chattering ascent towards Puyloubier, a humble village at the summit of Sainte-Victoire.

For a brief moment, the pancake fell back into the pan, and the pan on the stove. The bus found smooth ground, then stopped. I squinted through the raindrops outside, through the shadow of the fog, as if entering a giant's castle in the sky.

And there he lay, the dormant beast, above the miniscule pavillions and creamy orange cubes, above the neon-pink slide and wet wooden swing, above the rain-soaked leaves and tree bark buried in soil, above the dusty white van carrying the whole town's mail. There he lay on his empty stomach, the ravenous monster, his spikey back blackened by acid rain and bleached with pigeon poo, enveiled in steamy clouds. Spurts of verdant pubic hair had exploded under his armpits and chin, along the sides of his face; tiny terracotta pimples were clinging on, ready to erupt. 

For an eternal moment, I was Jonah inside the gaping mouth of a famished brute. I was Dante trapped in a fantastical purgatory, an abyss of raw foliage below and an undisturbed barbarian corpse above. 

I was overwhelmed by this creature. With the body odour of our faithful driver filling the cabin, I realized that all the overwhelming skyscrapers, Times Squares, Eiffel Towers, television towers, lighthouses could never compare to this masterpiece, built not by the hands of men but by the breath of God. We have theories of how mountains are formed, but no-one has ever built a mountain whose grandeur has no comparison except its creator alone. And yet the best had hardly begun.

By the grace of God, I realized that the creator of the mountains is the same creator who created me, who knew my name before He said "let there be light," and knitted me in my mother's womb, who tweaked every nerve in my body and set my heart beating at conception. The same creator of that gargantuan creature on which rests the tranquil town of Puyloubier is my creator. No human being can make me except my creator alone. And, He loves me. I'm not sure if I should have added a question mark at the end of the previous sentence, or an exclamation mark, or both. But I will leave it as is: a period, a full-stop. I will stop questioning, stop doubting, and rest here in His love, let myself drown in it, and breathe.   

Perfect Change

If my last post seemed too plaintive, this post is the redemption, for every cloud has a silver lining.

Forgetting to give thanks is simple; continuing to give thanks is hard. During my week of failures, self-defeat, and loneliness, I hardly noticed God's little gifts:

On gloomy Thursday, waiting for the bus was an ordeal. Squished behind a mob of black trenchcoats and leather heels, I tried to look busy and conceal the pain in my uterus. I decided to get out the money for the bus: 1,10 euros. But, as if a gloomy day plus period pains were not enough, I found that I only had a 20 euro bill and a bunch of bronze coins in my wallet. Paranoid from previous experiences of giving a large note to a bus driver, I decided to count my change.

1 centime, 2 centimes, 5 centimes, 10 centimes...I kept my head lowered, embarrassed by my resemblance to a homeless man, humiliated by self-pity. 80 centimes... 85 ... 90 ...100 ... 105 ... 107 ...109 ...110 centimes. There were no more coins left; my wallet floated in my palms. 110 centimes? That's 1,10 euros. That's my bus ticket home!

The bus pulled up at the curve. I stashed my wallet back in my bag, stepped up to the tiny plastic ticket counter, and dumped the pile of bronze under the driver's nose. "Sorry, this is all I have, but it's 1,10 euros." He nodded, closed the door, and the bus-stop outside disappeared.

****
Waking up home-sick on a Saturday morning is not exactly the best way to start off a day. The handsome young man in my dream and his gallant love for me turned into a nightmare, and I didn't get to watch the movie I wanted to watch on Friday evening due to last-minute changes, my pet peeve. And, I was drinking in the smoke from the bread I had burned the night before.

But, thanks to open windows and an ingenious invention called Skype, Saturday morning was not so bad after all. At 9h00, my smiling parents appeared on my laptop screen. I laughed, cried, laughed, cried, laughed, cried, laughed. At 12h00, I reconnected with them and showed them the lunch I had made, while they showed me their dinner. I laughed again. I felt loved.

****
During my first night in Aix, I prayed that this apartment would be used for God's glory, and the word "refuge" threw itself to the forefront of my contemplation. At the time, it seemed random, so I stamped a huge "IGNORE" sign on it.

During the wee hours of Thursday night (or Friday morning at 5h00), I awoke to violent door-banging, door-kicking, and screaming outside. My neighbour and her friend had come back from a bar and discovered that the roommate had locked the door from the inside before passing out drunk on the couch. Tipsy herself, my neighbour threw herself against her door faster than the TGV, bellowing "Open the f***ing door!"

I kept my eyes closed, trying to fall asleep again. But, God had other plans. Let them in. WHAT? No way, not here, not while she is so angry. Innkeeper. What has that got to do with this? After a short back-and-forth with God, I lost. I got up, opened the door, and squinted into the light. "Is everything okay?" I whispered. My neighbour turned around, her curls dangling over the corner of her eyes, her thong peeking out of her tight black jeans. Her friend, cowering under the staircase, flicked her eyes up at me in hope.

"Well, um, if you want, you can sleep here for the night."
"Are you sure?" asked my neighbour, as she strode in, the clacking of her boots echoing in the early morning air.
"Thanks, Marianne. I owe you big time," the other said as she unfurled her body and pulled herself up. She lay down on the couch, while my neighbour took the other bed in the room. There happened to be extra blankets in the wardrobe, too.

After a glass of tap water and a quick text message, the two began to snore incessantly. I thought about Mary and Joseph, the innkeeper, the stable...before I skipped away to lala-land too.

Sour Milk

Last Saturday, during a hiking trip up Mount Sainte-Victoire, I forgot my homemade chicken sandwich.

Monday morning, in Ethnology of France class, the preppy pal behind me focused more on making his high-school sweetheart giggle during the three hours than on the professor. Maybe he thought it was Ethnology of Love.

Wednesday evening, my tuna-tomato mix exploded in the microwave, and the lettuce and coriander died in the fridge.

Yesterday morning, my trail mix also exploded in my bag; I discovered that my 9h30 class actually started at 9h00, and - while waiting for the bus - I remembered that I was a woman (the French call it "les regles"...not that it's regular at all).

And finally, today. Today, my doorknob fell off; my boiled eggs turned out liquidy; I burned the broccoli; the half-finished bottle of milk turned sour. And, while stuffing my last croissant into a gaping jaw that I no longer recognize, I realized that I had devoured 10 croissants, 10 pain-au-chocolat AND 10 shortbread cookies all within the last three days.

Welcome to my week of failures, mishaps, and unexpected interruptions. Hardly a relaxing week at all, nor a week to be thankful for. Or so it seems.

I ate dinner alone last night, staring at the smiley pink elephant on the wall. Its head tilted sideways toward Meccah; its tiny round eyes shone bright; the sides of its mouth curved up into a grin, and its trunk pointed at the sunset. Outside, the rain splattered on the shutters like rice falling into a tin can, its pitter-patter like impatient fingers on a wooden desk, or a businessman's rhythmic toe-tapping in a 52-floor elevator to the 52nd floor. It was a perfect occasion to be gloomy. 

Halfway through my second buttered croissant, I felt fat and unbeautiful. On the third, I remembered the mistake I had made in Translation class, the silent-but-violent snickers behind me, and the emotional melting pot of humiliation, anger, and forgiveness as I lowered my head and pretended to erase something. The irony was that they were all students in my program, students from proud expensive universities in America, speaking Franglais. As I swallowed the third devilish delight, the word "pride" fought its way through the buzz in my brain to the throne-room of my consciousness. Not theirs, but mine.

I realized that studying abroad in France was not simply to become trilingual, to make French friends, and perchance to fall head-over-heels in love with a Frenchman and have my beautiful French children calling me "maman! maman!" all day. I realized, out of an awakening to my own pride, that living in a foreign country is officially one of the most humbling tasks I have ever taken on in my entire 20 years of life. It isn't just learning a new language that requires humility. Rather, it is the process of adapting to another country, another culture, another society and social atmosphere that requires humility. It is the process of adjusting my perspectives and goals, from wondering why the hell people never understand me to trying to understand them. It is the process of learning to be thankful for the gift before it arrives, to hope for the light at the end of the tunnel before it appears, and to rejoice, praise, laugh, dance, sing in the rain. It is the process of realizing that my life is not about me, that the world actually revolves around the Sun (or the Son), and that everyday, every breathing moment, every sunrise and sunset, every breeze and drop of rain, every white cloud and blue sky, every friend - and even every enemy - is a gift from above. This requires humility.

And finally, living in a foreign country is the process of realizing that fear is reserved for God only, that there is nothing else to fear except Him, nothing else to depend on except Him, no-one else to love as deeply as Him. Only God has the ability, the power, the grace to transform us in all dimensions. And only Jesus Christ has the power to fill the empty stomach and the empty heart, to still the trembling lip and the shivering soul, to heal the paralyzed beggar with his toddler in the rain and mend the bruised and broken heart. And all of this by His His life-giving Word, the power of His Holy Spirit, and His undeniable presence.

Yes, this week was tough, nothing went my way, and I felt like a failure. But maybe it's time to stop relying on myself as if I need no help at all. Maybe it's time to chuck these puny little plans out the window and follow God's plans that are, I imagine, bigger and better than I could ever imagine.