Arabs, Jews and Paris
ALAN, RAY
Euro vista By Ray Alan Arabs, Jews and Paris Journalism isn't always as surrealistic as Hollywood pretends, but it tries hard. The first editor who paid me a retainer said he did so...
...The other was sitting at the table D had booked in an excellent restaurant near his apartment...
...Picasso shows us only a fraction of the horrors inflicted on Guernica, but that is eloquent enough...
...Generalissimo Francisco Franco's revolt against the elected Republican government of Spain in 1936 was supported by religious as well as political extremists in Europe's main Catholic communities...
...Nowadays, pro-Fascist priests are little more than a squalid memory in Europe, and the atmosphere in the Catholic Church is cleaner than it was a generation ago...
...She did, and we were married the next day...
...The best exhibition we saw in the Parisian Arab Institute consisted mainly of pleasant but unexciting textiles, pottery and tiles, with a few precious items dating from the pre-Arab civilizations of Mesopotamia, Lebanon and Tunisia...
...but he was a good man, he seemed to like receiving offbeat pieces from a peripatetic rookie, and he paid me 20 per cent more than I had expected...
...A long taxi ride to the pound where delinquent cars are interned, and an outrageous fine, recovered the Citroen...
...and can see what time has done to the Lapin agile, the 19th-century nightspot and hangout for arty pseudos...
...Early in my first stint in Egypt, emboldened by the 10-day Arabic course under my belt, I decided to visit a step-pyramid, about 4,500 years old, in the desert south of Cairo...
...There I was given a letter from a French girl in Paris whom I had last seen, more than a yearbefore, in Algiers...
...One of them grabbed the donkey's tail...
...It took the six of us on board and whizzed us to Montpellier in good time to catch the TGV...
...the others closed in on me, demanding baksheesh...
...We are now a bit older, but things still happen to us...
...As I walked along the base of the pyramid, three Egyptians appeared from behind a shed...
...At the station we were told our train would be 40 minutes late because of a power cut caused by a storm in the Pyrenees...
...Well, I won't say "greedy," but they dream occasionally of a French-Spanish agreement that would allow the artist's Guernica—now behind bulletproof glass in Madrid—to revisit Paris, where it was first exhibited in 193 7. This is a dream that sounds like a nightmare south of the Pyrenees: France's stuck-in-the-mud National Front is regurgitating fascist idiocy, and its goons might be tempted to damage a painting that has been diabolized by extreme Rightwingers for 60 years...
...The pleasantest way to go there, if you like walking, is on foot, via the hill of Montmartre where the Sacré Coeur basilica stands...
...You can also see a cryptic garden-wall sculpture by a friend of a friend of mine...
...Our two daughters had told us, sadly, that their professional obligations in the Midi might prevent them from joining us in Paris...
...I wasn't sure that was a compliment...
...France's national railroad company picked up the tab...
...After Franco's Nazi allies bombed Guernica (on a market day, when its streets were crowded) bishops and priests joined Fascist propagandists in pretending that the Republican town had been attacked by the Republicans...
...Miraculously, one popped up in a railroad station D said he must visit to collect a "parcel...
...the street narrowed...
...But could any civilized artist or writer, aware of the bombing of defenseless townsfolk, suppress his/her natural urge to help them and to warn future generations against religious as well as political thuggery...
...Perhaps he is thinking: "A plague on both your houses...
...The first editor who paid me a retainer said he did so because I seemed to make things happen...
...I couldn't risk driving to it—the road was largely a work of fiction —so I crossed the Nile, opposite the pyramid, on a village ferry that I shared with four sacrificial lambs and a kind fellah who offered me a drink of river water from an old Coke can...
...Time's nomination of Picasso as "artist of the century" has aroused discussion without reviving the ferocious quarrels of mid-century...
...Picasso eternizes them as they suffer and scream with terror and fury at a hypocritical Heaven, represented by the sun, which just watches—supposedly good but, when commitment is needed, indifferent, perhaps contemptuous...
...I hired a friendly looking donkey in the village and reached the pyramid in less than an hour...
...Even so, Catholics still criticize Picasso for apparently associating Heaven, metaphorically, with the Guernica massacre...
...He parked his Citroën, with police-approved antitheft gadgets, in front of a boutique...
...The museum was worth a visit, he said, but it was cramped and in the process of being moved to 71, rue du Temple...
...and there, looking forlorn, stood a hemmed-in building that housed the Jewish museum on its third floor...
...Tasteless office and apartment blocks have spoiled a few patches of Parisian skyline, but the Louvre, Musée d'Orsay and Sainte Chapelle are as enchanting as ever...
...Picasso, Guernica and Heaven Although Parisian admirers of Pablo Picasso have a museum dedicated to him and at least two other displays of his work, a few of them are...
...After that, the tide turned...
...You pass between two vineyards that need pruning yet still produce wine (yes, in the heart of Paris...
...They jeeped me back to Cairo...
...We walked around the huge monument, discussing what little we knew about the society and religion underlying it...
...We asked a passerby when it opens, but he didn't know...
...When we showed the station manager our tickets, he made a phone call and within a few minutes a comfortable seven-seat Renault taxi appeared...
...She had obtained a visa for Beirut, and would be arriving in three weeks...
...We walked down them...
...D met us in Paris and drove us to a café opposite the Bastille opera...
...And those familiar views of, and from, Notre Dame and the Sacré Coeur, Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower are still magnificent...
...Four other people were in the same predicament...
...I hoped to meet the French archeologist who had saved the site from looting and neglect, but I couldn't find him...
...In the midst of bombing and destruction, unarmed people try to protect children...
...It's the best in the world...
...The bull, previously violent and antihuman in Picasso's universe, now has a calm expression and pose, and clearer eyes than hitherto...
...With exquisite timing, one of the most splendid vehicles I have ever seen appeared from behind a sand dune...
...Arab painting is often skimpy because of the Islamic restriction on the portrayal of human, especially female, features...
...The driver was a beautiful young woman...
...Recently, we set off from the south of France to attend a university ceremony in Paris costarring our son, D. The moment we got into the taxi that took us to the nearest railroad station, we felt this was going to be a day of surprises...
...Probably not, we agreed...
...You may remembermeeting Jeannette in "A Spanish Carnival," NL, April 6-20, 1998...
...The Americans looked disillusioned when I suggested that, although the pyramids had both religious and dynastic significance, some of them may have been relief projects to absorb Egypt's growing population, already aproblem 3,000 years ago...
...That too is a narrow street, but it is nearer the city center and has the right kind of name...
...Israel doesn't have the kind of PR budget such showplaces require...
...We said we couldn't acceptthe delay because we were going to Paris and had to catch the TGV (Europe's fastest and most punctual train) in Montpellier, 93 miles away...
...A call to the police confirmed her suspicion...
...I used Italian glue...
...Alongside her, in a basket, was a strange baby with the face of a pretty two-yearold and a small body that looked six months old...
...and nationalism and religion have driven away the little groups of (mainly Christian) Lebanese, Egyptian and Armenian painters who once brightened a few side streets in Beirut, Alexandria and Aleppo...
...You Brits sure pop up in unexpected places...
...Its spacious layout and main public areas—library, reading rooms, exhibition floors, and rooftop restaurant—are admirable...
...When, in her excitement, my wife dropped the specs with which she was about to study the menu, breaking part of the frame, he picked them up, hurried away and returned a few minutes later having repaired them perfectly...
...It was a jeep adapted for desert travel and occupied by four angels...
...But don't wear high heels or try to explore the rue des Saules by car: The street soon becomes a succession of steep flights of steps...
...They'll stay mended," he said...
...Whether or not the bull is "Godlike" (as an English authority on Picasso has said), he seems to have realized that Heaven and humanity are at loggerheads...
...My rescuers were American tourists...
...Jeeze...
...How do you think we hold Italy together...
...In 1969-70 my book, Spanish Quest, was assailed because my inquiries led me to support the people of Guernica and the fewjoumalists who saw the Nazi bombardment...
...When we returned, the car, its antitheft gadgets, our bags, and a copy of The New Leader, had all vanished...
...The decibels of our reunion delighted the restaurant's Italian owner...
...said one of the angels...
...But a Paris directory we consulted listed a Museum of Judaic Art and History at 42, rue des Saules...
...Catholic publications in France and England repeated the lie, and it continued to circulate for more than three decades...
...The rue des Saules slopes down the back of the hill...
...The Egyptians ran off and the donkey, disliking the company I kept, trotted back toward its village...
...An interesting new building in central Paris is the elegant 10-story Arab World Institute at 1, rue St-Bemard...
...Leaving the Arab Institute, we wondered whether Paris possesses a comparable Israeli cultural center...
...The driver said she took the baby to a local hospital most mornings for treatment...
...A girl in the boutique suspected the police of the theft: The Citroën's big nose had perhaps poked two inches into a no-parking space...
...Then we saw a neat-looking man wearing a black hat, and pounced on him...
...Its entrance and windows were shut...
Vol. 82 • January 1999 • No. 1
