Oh Laa Laaah!
Utterly en-Franced
It was the winter of my discontent, my frostbite, my chapped lips, my frozen hermitage. My skin was so dry it itched like a crack head jonesing for the next hit long overdue.
Faithful readers, I tried very hard not to gloat to you all when I was in Barcelona during winters past, walking along the Mediterranean in the sunshine while New York shivered.
But after this winter, this awful, brutal, snow-nado of a winter, it was way past time to seek the sun. This time, I was off to the south of France.
To be clear, “officially” this was a trip to (further) research a book idea I’ve had for quite a while revolving around Marseille (or what I imagined Marseille to be like via the movies): dark, dirty, dangerous - my kinda town! That idea morphed into 17 days along the south of France, Provence, Lyon and, bien sur, Paris.
1000 kilometers of driving (that’s 600 miles to you metric numbskulls) and 16 days of blue-sky and sun (a bit of rain must fall one day, mon ami), it was all almost-cliche lovely.
But I come back to the original point of this story: Marseille.
Oddly, yet consistently, “everyone” I mentioned this trip to, especially French people, gave the “thumbs down” when I said Marseille, complete with a frown, a shake of the head and a look that combined (semi-) disgust and more that a soupçon of fear. Perfect!
They could not have been more wrong.
Marseille was presented to me by a local “fixer” as an egalitarian oasis, where the rich are not lauded (or particularly respected) and the poor are elevated and never pitied. This, I was told, says it all about Marseille: “there is a little for everyone”.
It is a fun, bustling and balanced place in so many respects: high-end shopping streets but also ragged edges at the not-far-away outskirts. There were burka’s peeking out behind the gates, the redolent scent of cumin, baskets of baskets and olives, farina, harissa and many variations of ras el hanout along with the sounds of “Orchestra de Barbes ‘Zawiya’ “ spilling onto the sidewalk.
I had hoped to find and walk and observe, smell, taste and touch the “Arab quartier” as part of my research, albeit alighting from my 5-star hotel each day (“Hotel C2”, a fabulous place, if you ever go!). While there isn’t a defined neighborhood as such, the “Noailles” marketplace is, for all purposes, the most accessible place for what I sought.
Kebab shops to the left of me! Kebab shops to the right of me! Fresh Moroccan “msemen” bread and evil eye pottery abounded.
This was not exactly a Jason Bourne movie come to life, but to be sure, there was an element of suspicion around every eggplant seller, outshouting and out-whistling each other over their watermelons and oranges from Tunisia, alllll the while, keeping an eye, evil and otherwise, out for something and someone different.
In the doorways, the young guns, with their hand clap and double-kiss greetings in their coordinated track suits, gave a quick, cold stare and made a complete judgement of you in about 3 seconds. If you warranted further review, a whistle, a nod, a grunt got three more heads turned towards you.
The boss, sitting in front of a “oriental pastry delights” shop, usually had a Gucci bucket hat, hand tattoos and a (fake) rose gold wristwatch watching over the proceedings, giving assignments and then scattering the troops with the most subtle flick of his head.
With the gauntlet sidled through, then came the side-long glances of the old men, sitting in front of small and long-empty coffee cups and glasses of mint tea, the leaves shredded and scattered along its tulip-shaped length, tasbeh click-clacking quietly while you exchanged an “I’m from New York” glance and made your own judgements.
Tunisie, Algerie, Senegal, Maroc were all in the house…halal boucheries and cases of soda piled high, spices and baklava and phone shops: it was cautiously energetic place, filled with story possibilities!
The rest of Marseille was equally compelling in its own right: a day-long festival of chess, with 100 boards set up for anyone to play against anyone and teachers young and old shuffling through the Sunday afternoon crowd to offer advice. A spectacular Sunday market with fish still wiggling in their nets, food trucks of all kinds, including an excellent Armenian one, all flanking a very big harbor with a clever and thoughtful ferry crossing all day long for 1 Euro traversing from “uptown to downtown”.
NOTE: As a cultural aside, I was delighted to see and confirm a sizeable Armenian presence in Marseille as well as Nice. I knew their place, and France’s, in post-1915 genocidal Armenian history, but to see it in front of me, via churches, top-quality bakeries and grocery stores as well as the sudden appearance of an Armenian name on a buildings list of tenants, from lawyers to architects, brough a big smile!
An equally compelling corner of the city is the Le Panier district, overflowing with painted murals, intriguing graffiti with stories behind the images and not just fanciful tags, and a raucous-yet-quiet immersion into art and the soul of a neighborhood.
Nice was nice; Saint Remy was heavenly. Menton, Antibes, Cassis, Gordes, Saint Paul de Vence: all of it added up to a sunny, memorable trip. But Marseille held its place with me: it didn’t need an opium den nor did I need to get knifed to whet my bon appeitit for more.
While perception is rarely reality, quite possibly Marseille’s reputation was deserved at a time, and it has not been able to shake it off since then: it’s not all bouillabaisse and heroin trafficking, at least not to my eye. But this is now and Marseille satisfied my curiousity and confirmed less of my suspicions and more of my intrigue.
As the t-shirt says “Marseille Bebe”!
Merci beacoup, les amis!