Behind the Beauty of Paris: The Harsh Reality

Romance, fashion, culture, and good food-for the last 200 years the name of one city has automatically come to the minds of thousands of people around the world when they hear those words.

Paris.

It could be that no other five letters invoke such a widespread range of similar connotations with so many people.

"The magic of Paris is in its attributes," said Natalie Banta, a Brigham Young University law student who spent a semester in Paris as an undergrad studying the country's history. "The sparkling Eiffel Tower at night, the calm Seine making an island out of the heart of the city, its old cathedrals, modern museums with the world treasures; it's the fact that you are 40 minutes away from one of the most famous palaces of the world. And of course, the shopping is amazing."

But if one takes her eyes off the sparkle of the Eiffel Tower and looks just below it, something quite different might catch her attention. The glint of hundreds of mini Eiffel Tower key chains wink at her and the vendor, a tall, gaunt African with broken English, approaches her and says her beauty has earned her an exceptional price on one of the key chains.

"For you, I make special deal," he says, flashing his brilliant white teeth. "Special deal, pretty lady. Just for you. One dolla. Only one dolla."

Dozens of his comrades line the paths that lead to one of the world's most visited sites. They're selling everything from wind-up birds to cookie cutter postcards to plastic Mickey Mouses dancing jerky Irish jigs.

Their appearance and manner contrast sharply against the splendour of Paris' chic boutiques and cafés, bustling with abundant consumerism and elitist crowds.

Though these people live in a city many Americans dream of going to, theirs is not the life most would want.

With the 2005 riots prominent among several other uprisings by the "banlieu punks," as some call the trouble-raising young men who fill the public housing in the socially shunned Parisian suburbs, the true lifeblood pulsing through the city is starting to gain a voice.

The following are the stories of only a few of the many who left destroyed homes and loved ones, dead and alive, for the hope of aid in the land whose government's imperial dallying often played a heavy part in the unrest of their native countries.

Natasha - Congo

Natasha is a beautiful woman. Her eyes are like two pieces of glimmering coal, and her skin is as smooth as chocolate. Her hairstyle changes every day-sometimes in a sleek, dark bob, other days in long, intricate twists and braids. She has just arrived in France from Congo and lives in Torcy, a suburb 45 minutes east of Paris with a heavy concentration of Arab and African immigrants.

Trudging the 15 minute walk to her apartment from the train station, the weeds battle with the trash for space on the fields bordering the gravely streets.

It's quiet.

The walls of abandoned buildings and old train stations scream elaborately drawn obscenities in English and French. Many complain of Bush and/or America.

The sudden rank odor announces the upcoming building-a 10 story apartment building, surrounded by more weeds and more trash. Everyone stares: some menacing, some curious. It is painfully clear that a well-dressed white woman does not belong here. The vending machine in the lobby still only has one bottle of water in it, just like last week, and the elevator still doesn't work.

Natasha answers her door after four knocks. She flashes her white smile and opens goes back to her bed where she'd been napping. Her bed is low, with no springs, and covered in a thin, white sheet. The air is heavy and damp. Without the occasional breezes flung in through the open window, it would be suffocating. Natasha opens her tiny fridge backed up against the wall opposite her bed. Every time the bedroom door is opened, she has to squeeze past it.

"Have a drink," she says, nudging a tiny glass bottle of Orangina across the floor. "It's too hot! Oh, it's too hot."

She collapses again on her bed, knocking her collection of wigs and two bottles of bright nail polish off her nightstand. She leans her head back against the cracked wall and sighs, looking across the room through half-opened eyes.

"I talked to my daughter today," she says. "She's okay. I think she has a boyfriend."

Natasha speaks to her 13-year-old daughter a couple times a month.

"It's okay," she said one day when asked if she missed her. "She's happy in Africa. But I had to come here."

In the course of Congo's Civil War, which has left over 50,000 dead since 1998, Natasha's mother grew ill, and Natasha nursed her until her death. After the death of her mother, Natasha fled to France, leaving her daughter with relatives. France was the logical choice-she already spoke the language and it was the only country that would award her political refugee status.

France prides itself on its comparatively lenient policy towards immigrants, which, especially compared to countries like the United States and Germany, is practically an open-door strategy. But the problems festering in the endless blocks of hideous government high rises-some suburbs are 80 percent public housing-are hard to put into any sort of categorical number, since France refuses to recognize race at all.

An American professor living in France, Mary Harvan Gorgette wrote in the National Catholic Reporter in 2005, "The problem is that this idealized vision of France is now, and perhaps has always been, a myth, akin to the ideal of the great American melting pot." In a country that refuses to recognize race, it's "an uphill battle to prove discrimination. It ignores that French people talk about race and ethnicity all the time..Race is a reality for everyone in France except the French state."

"Make sure to always lock and close your window, because if you don't, an Arab or an African will come in and steal your things." Madame De Ponchville, a resident of the 8eme arrondissement, makes sure to say to her American exchange students.

The difficulty is surviving once you're there. The theory has often been projected that France will let anyone in to try and make up for the French-initiated Jewish roundups during WWII. As a complete reverse from the usual obstacle course immigrants to the U.S. face, getting into France isn't the hard part. It's surviving once you're there.

Elise and David - Cameroon

Elise and David grew up and got married in Cameroon. He was a successful businessman, and she stayed at home with their two daughters-Sophie, 10 and Patricia, 2. One terrible day they received the news everyone has dreaded at least once: David had cancer. There was no adequate treatment center in their country, and so the couple decided to go to the only place that wouldn't take years to obtain entrance and where David could receive the needed care to survive-France. Leaving 10-year-old Sophie with relatives but with Patricia in tow, the family encountered no difficulties in entering the country, and soon found an apartment on the 13^th floor of a gray cement high-rise in a suburb of Paris. They didn't know how long they would be in France, and the price of living was so much higher than at home that Elise decided to submit an application for a work permit in order to put food on the table while David was recovering from chemotherapy treatments.

She waited for two years. For two years the couple and their child lived on nothing but the meager welfare given to immigrants and the rest of their rapidly decreasing savings. Elise grew desperate, but nothing she did seemed to affect the process. She was denied several times work papers. But don't worry, the state told her. Your husband can work. Why do you need to? And they sent David, who could barely stand at the end of the day, a work permit.

Elise now works illegaly cleaning hotels in Paris.

"She had no choice," said Amy Harper, a former LDS missionary who worked with Elise. "She tried to do it the right way, but they wouldn't let her, so she had to go be like every other immigrant in France and work illegaly. Is she just going to let her family starve?"

For two years they've petitioned the government to let their 10-year-old daughter join them. But for two years entry for the child was denied.

Usually Elise is quiet, reserved even. Her hair is always pulled back smoothly into an elegant twist, and her large eyes are calm. David moves through the house like a ghost. The only noise in the stuffy apartment is noise made by Patricia, who runs through the place like she owns it, alternately whiny and charming as the mood strikes her.

But today, something is different. Elise fidgets, barely; a smile hovers around her eyes. She announces that David left yesterday for Cameroon to retrieve their daughter. It looked like she might finally get her Visa. He would be there two weeks, finalizing the paperwork between the two countries, but after two years, the last wait was nothing. They would finally have their daughter back.

After three weeks David returned. Alone. At the last minute, the Visa was revoked, and he was forced to leave his daughter, not knowing when he would see her again.

Annie and Sophie - United States

They were two ordinary American teenagers. They loved shopping, hanging out with friends, and Wendy's. Sophie had a knack for doing her friends' hair in fancy updoes for school formals and Annie was known for her sense of style.

They cared nothing for politics or the news or much of anything then the happenings of their own lives in Minnesota. They had no warning, no time to adjust to a completely different life that would become theirs suddenly one day with one phone call.

"Some guy just showed up one day and told us we were illegal and that we had to be deported," Annie said. The sense of betrayal and shock still sounds in her voice, even two years later. "We had no idea. My parents had never told us."

Annie and Sophie's parents had immigrated from Laos during that country's violence-filled unrest two decades ago when Sophie was just a baby. The two girls don't even remember their former home. Their parents did a remarkably good job of integrating themselves and their family into American society. They learned English, got jobs, and bought a house. Their two older sons had married American girls and had families of their own.

But it wasn't enough. They had done everything right but go through proper governmental procedures. And now they had to leave. A petition for clearance was denied, and Annie and Sophie and their parents were not only forced to leave, but banned from the United States of America for a minimum of 10 years. If they did anything more than place a foot on American soil within that time period, they would be arrested. After 10 years they could visit, but never again could the family return to their home on a permanent basis.

The family did the only thing they could-they fled to the only country it wouldn't take years to get into and where they thought they'd have a chance at making a decent standard of living-France.

It's been two years since the girls have seen their brothers and younger sister, who had the fortune of being born in the U.S., and so gained the privilege of citizenship and was not considered a criminal with the rest of her family. None of the family speaks French yet, and Annie says they spend most of their time at home where they share a house with their cousins.

"We don't really know anybody still," Annie said. "It's hard, learning French."

Annie can say some phrases, but Sophie is completely in the dark when it comes to speaking with anyone outside her family. They have no plans, no dreams for the future. Annie would like to go to England, but she doesn't want to leave her family. Their life stretches out before them in an endless road of seclusion and homesickness.

"France is not our home. It will never be our home," Annie said. "I'm an American."

Somehow, all the romantic streets and chic cafes of Paris don't do much for these girls when they're faced with the knowledge that's all they'll ever know.

"Many immigrants and their descendants live in outlying suburbs of French cities, in housing projects where jobs are scarce, education mediocre, and assistance with social integration minimal," Gorgette said. "By ignoring these realities of urban order and by completely eschewing race-based policies, the French state has actually fostered segregation and the communautarisme it dreads."

The beautiful, opulent veneer Paris presents to the world is undermined if one knows which doors to open; the hub of the city's thousands of struggling immigrants presents a picture not quite congruous with the one so many Americans cherish for the city of lights.