I lived in Paris with my parents, in the Cité des Arts. My father was an artist; his paintings were strange, dreamlike, like things you see in a half-remembered story. I went to primary school for two years. My classmates were younger - three years younger - because I had to learn French fast, even though I was already ten.
After a tough first year, Paris grew on me, though I stayed only two years, when I was ten and eleven. I still see the sunset over the Seine and Notre-Dame, glowing across the river like a quiet promise.
The first year was hard. The French school was strict, much more than English schools, and I had to catch up. The next year we moved to a better apartment in a quiet neighborhood in front of the iconic river Seine.
I changed schools, and a kind, elderly teacher helped me find my step. I believed God sent her so I would not carry a bitter memory of the French. Every morning I walked half a kilometer, past the busy Rue de Rivoli, by the Arab spice shop and a small church with a red door in Saint-Paul.
At the Cite de Arts, I made friends - a Jewish boy Avril from next door, and a long haired Chilean boy Sebastian, older than me by three years. One day I saw him from my window, standing by the traffic lights at the Seine, wearing dark glasses and holding a white cane. He wasn’t blind. He was playing a game, pretending, waiting at the red light to be helped across. He laughed when I told him I saw. I wondered if his mother knew.
In
late ‘73, the spike in oil prices broke the country. The boom was finished. It
was called the Trente Glorieuses, 30 years of robust post-war economic growth.
The paintings did not sell in Paris. There was too much art for sale. So we went back to
Malaysia, and my father took work as a designer for his brother’s business.
Epilogue
After 50 years, I return to this city for a 5-day trip on 1st October 2025. I expected to be disappointed after reading how the place has changed for the worse with petty thieves, riots and illegal immigrants. But after going to the Louvre with my wife, Paris remains a city with grandeur in its stones, wide spaces and chilly air.
We stayed at a wonderful, cosy apartment on Boulevard de Clichy with a street view on the 6th floor. The owner was an established screen writer who has tons of books on his bookshelf, including ones on Kubrick, Leonard Cohen and other French film directors. The one book that I read was a fantastic short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer called Gimpel the Fool.
On the French habit of sitting in cafes and drinking in bars after work, the people seem to either take the beauty of the city for granted or live in it fully. I told a taxi driver that the French seem happy. He replied they may look happy, but that was not true: some cope with stress using cannabis or sometimes cocaine. That, he said with a smirk, was happiness for them.
The
Ascent
On
the day of departure, I woke at five in the morning. It was the last day. I had
to see the church, the Sacré-Cœur.
It sat at the top of the Montmartre.
The walk was twenty minutes and I climbed about two hundred steps to reach the summit at six am, breathing hard. The
steps had done their work.
They
built the church for penance. A
debt owed to Christ. France had been beaten by Prussia with 143,000 dead. They
said it was the country's moral decline
that did it. Oddly, that decline - the
old one, maybe the new one - had been on my mind the whole trip. I stood in the
cold stone and looked out. The debt remained.
If I had to give one word to describe the French character, it would not be “bon vivant,” but a cool, contented indifference. Whatever happens - good or bad - they say, “Ça fait rien.” It doesn’t matter. Perhaps that philosophical mindset is the root cause of it's moral, political and economic decline.
Politicians may talk of war. It doesn't matter until one fine day, the foreign troops come marching in through the Arc de Triomphe like the Germans once did. Then the tears will turn into tearless mourning. And the sun will still shine bright over this city of whispers and ancient stones.
