Mono-

After my history class in Marseille on Wednesday, I saw the little girl with the pink t-shirt and bright green trousers again, except this time she was wearing a navy blue t-shirt and loose tan trousers, second-hand clothes from a brother or a male cousin, perhaps. 

***

Before muddy green mold starts growing on my blog, I shall submit another post of redemption.

Recently, I have found little motivation to write. As the novelty of tourism wears off like steam condensing on a bathroom mirror, I have begun to see myself more clearly from a French perspective.

I am in foreign country, a more-or-less monocultural country, a country where assimilation has replaced integration, where Asia and Africa are countries, where hyphenated identities do not exist, where my epicanthic folds, onion nose, and flat pancake of a face not only define my ethnicity, my culture, and my language, but also immediately stuff me in a box along with students from Mainland China, the Korean boss of the Cantonese-Korean-Japanese-Vietnamese restaurant, as well as the splatter of Cambodian, Indonesian, Filipino, and Malaysian immigrants.

Here, in France, everything is one-dimensional. Mono-identity, mono-cultural, mono-ethnic. Even the big and famous national Target-imitation is called Monoprix. (The other one is entitled Carrefour, meaning crossroads. Another big convenience store is called Casino, probably because you have to gamble all your money away on the week's groceries and a packet of cigarettes. The best way to understand the state of a society or a country is by looking at the names of its supermarkets and convenience stores.)

I recently participated in a French cooking class where I learned how to peel potatoes, chop eggplants, crush garlic, and create the most important element of a Provencal salad: the vinaigrette. While waiting for the concoction to flourish in the oven, I tackled the awkward silence by asking the chef a question that I pose to every successful career professional: did you always want to be a cook (or a doctor, lawyer, social activist, painter…)?

The most interesting part of the conversation went like this:

"Oh, you know, I have a Japanese assistant." She winks at me.
"Ah!" I reply in a surprised tone.
"And, I also have a Vietnamese friend. They're so wonderful!" She beams at me, showing her gold molar.
"Ah!" I beam back at her.

***

Granted, I have taken this opportunity to discover my roots, buying tofu, soy sauce, black vinegar and sesame oil from the local Asian products store and resisting the temptation to ask for the rice cooker on the highest shelf. The store also sells other "oriental" products, such as pancakes from Lebanon, Turkish delights, curry powder, Tunisian pastry, figs, dates, dried prunes, apricots, almonds, peanuts, rice, cornmeal, and Provencale desserts. At the beginning of the semester, I thanked God for this shop. But, since then, due to bad service, I have vowed never to return. Here is an example of bad service:

I, the trusting customer prepared to give away some hard-earned money, grab a brown paper bag to fill it with rice from China.

"Madame, madame!" His voice explodes from the other end of the store, accompanied by heavy mono-rhythmic footsteps, polluting the tranquil aroma of curry and ginger. "No, you cannot do that. We do that."
"Ah! Ok."

He snatches the little brown bag from my hands. Stunned, I thank him, thinking he's going to scoop me some rice. But he plunges the scooper into the sack of basmati rice, twists it closed, and holds it up to another customer. "Enough?"
I decide to make for the cashier and leave as soon as I could. The other shopkeeper, a very kind lady, asks him, "Are you helping this young lady (me)?"
"No." He shouts back.

She leads me over to the rice and scoops a sack-full of Chinese rice and heads back to the cashier with me. I ended up not buying anything because they weren't willing to accept credit card payments for anything under 10 euros.