Selling to the elite

Around 12.30pm, Ali starts making his habitual rounds on the affluent Boulevard Saint Germain. Despite his diminutive size, he walks at a breathless pace, often cutting across traffic to get to the other side of the road, and always with a stack of French newspaper Le Monde in arm which he sells to the French elite.

“Ça y est! Ça y est!”
“That’s it! That’s it!” Covering more than 10 kilometers a day, Ali’s signature cry is instantly recognisable by the quarter’s inhabitants – a tactic which has won him much sales and consequently much popularity with his employers. He often furnishes his pitch with the headlines of the day. Sometimes they are real. Sometimes they are cheeky, blatant lies such as Sarkozy is dead. Today, he cries: “Strauss-Kahn candidat! Strauss-Kahn candidat!” Strauss-Kahn is running for president.

In the restaurants
All the restaurants in the area know Ali well. He kisses the cheeks of the female waiters, gives them big hugs, shakes the hands of the managers. His loud cry throughout the dining hall bothers no-one. He knows the floorplans so well that he can easily cover a restaurant within a minute (if no loyal clients stop him for a chat), coming in through the front door and zipping out through the rear entrance like a fresh gust of air.

Les fidèles
Ali has friends – the loyal ones – in every café and brasserie. They expect Ali everyday and never fail to buy a paper. This Turkish man is, amongst dozens of others, his “very good friend”. The two warmly embrace and exchange updates. The man smiles after Ali as he runs into the restaurant to make his rounds. “I have known Ali for nearly 35 years. I know his whole family! His five sons, his wife. He’s quite a character, isn’t he?”

Tempted to stay
Ali often sits down with his loyal ones while passing them the day’s papers, chatting easily as though they have known each other forever. For this group of men, forever does not seem like much of an exaggeration. They have been friends for 40 years. One man is an astrologist, the other a palm-reader. The conversation runs naturally and Ali is always tempted to stay for a coffee. “I cannot stay,” Ali says ruefully but firmly. “If I do, it means I get less sales.” The men understand. “Allez, au travail!” They wave him jokingly back to work.

A ladies’ man
Groups of ladies greet Ali as though they are his grandmother, clucking at him affectionately although they cannot be very different in age – Ali is 57. One lady inside the brasserie raps sharply on the window and beckons him. “Are you forgetting about me?” she calls out. Ali is by her side in moments, giving her a warm hug and kisses. The ladies pass him bills which he swiftly exchanges for small piles of coins. He works so quickly that the lady inside the brasserie has to call him back to her: “I still need to pay you for yesterday!”

Hailed on the streets
Between cafés and restaurants, Ali is often stopped on the streets. Sometimes these are also loyal ones who do not want to miss buying a paper from their favourite vendor. Sometimes they are strangers who turn at the sound of his cries. One loyal one laughs knowingly as he spots the Pakistani. “Who died today, Ali?”

Bonjour around every corner
Ali is never too busy to respond to shout-outs on the street. People lean out of car windows to call out to him. Old men walking their dogs wave to him. Being with Ali is like going around with a social passport in the 6th arrondissement. His friends seem to all be friends with each other, as though they form a club of his loyal ones. Even I get friendly waves.

Weaving through traffic
Ali transports his papers from one end of the Boulevard Saint Germain to the other using a sturdy old bike with a basket on the front and back. He weaves through the traffic in the narrow streets with complete ease, but the sight of the small Pakistani man in his haste makes it terrifying to watch.

A local celebrity
“Ça y est, Ali! Somebody is following you!” A couple of waiters call after him while keeping their eyes on me. Ali responds jovially between his trademark cries. “Yes yes, she is my friend. A journalist from Malaysia!” They laugh and pull him over gently by his arm. They want a picture with their local celebrity.

Camaraderie
Ali also sells to restaurants. At Le J’Go, he hands over a pile of Le Monde papers and special issues and is given a glass of red wine in return. He tells me confidentially: “I don’t always drink. Only once in a while. I never take advantage, you know. That’s not what friends are for.” The chef and the bartender are cool dudes: no hugs and affectionate gestures here, just laid-back shows of mutual respect and camaraderie. “I like this place,” Ali says. “The atmosphere is good.”

Sharing his views
Nearing the end of his route, Ali gets us a couple of glasses of red wine (again on the house). He grows philosophical while reminiscing about his life, speaking of how there are good and bad people in the world, but the good are in the minority. I ask him how he feels about the most recent crackdown on work permits. He replies thoughtfully: “In life, it is good if you are forced to suffer a bit. It is more difficult now, so what? This means you will work harder. You cannot really appreciate happiness if you never work for it.”

Lunch break
Around 3pm, Ali makes his way out of a brasserie and into a Chinese caterer. This is where he has his daily lunch. “The food is good and cheap here. Asian food is always cheap, you know,” he says. He picks out a box of white rice and some shrimps and dumplings to go with it.

“I make the world laugh, but the world makes me cry”
Ali’s first book and the one he is best known for – Je fais rire le monde… mais le monde me fait pleurer! – is an autobiography which traces his journey from Pakistan to France as well as his personal struggle with his family. It is an alternative source of income besides his newspaper, but only a modest one. “I make 80 cents per book when a bookshop sells it.” Ali carries a few copies with him in his bicycle whenever he goes on his newspaper route. For someone who has never gone to school, his writing is unexpectedly alluring – the language is simple, the narrative startlingly aware.

Immortalised as the Loved One
In 2011, the district council of the 6th arrondissement held a poll asking residents to nominate the “Loved Ones” of the quarter. The only foreign nominee, Ali emerged with the most votes. His portrait has been immortalized on the wall of a building on Rue du Four, a collaborative painting which he himself participated in. The mural is located here.

the last time i ached this much was over the Unbearable Lightness of Being. i’m wondering what the actual reading experience will feel like.

By the river in Bristol

A and i spent three nights here and took a slow afternoon walk along the river one day. boathouses fringed the banks and all looked incredibly cosy. children’s clothes hung on a line in one of the boathouses and others had kitchen tables which looked like they had just seen some breakfast toast and coffee.

ASEFUAN AGM 2011 in Amsterdam

this year’s AGM was on Public Health, as were the rest of our projects over the past year. i took some notes from the conference but obviously i wasn’t really listening.

Unfinished doodle of Celle

Celle is Oma’s favorite town in the world and i could see why. just 20 minutes from Otze, it’s a tiny little town with old Fachwerkstil buildings, cobbled streets and policemen on horses clomping around. it just doesn’t seem like a town of modern times. it’s too quaint, too dear, too happy.

Hannoversch-Münden, an idyllic town tucked away into the hills

one of the random stopovers A made on the drive back from Frankfurt. i had been sleeping the whole way and when i woke up, we were suddenly in the hills and surrounded by the fluorishing green of highland forests. i loved it. it was possibly even more dear than Celle – it was so tucked away and untouched by metropolitanism that it didn’t seem possible that we did not just time-travel a few decades back just to get there. it looks a lot emptier in this drawing than it rightfully should, but it was too difficult for me to sketch in the folk bustling around.

A taking a quick nap at a Rastplatz on the way home from Frankfurt

A drove me to and back from Frankfurt in one day just for my visa. it was three hours each way and by the time he reached the fourth hour his eyes were looking tired and he looked like he would fall asleep at any moment. we decided to pull over at a Rastplatz for him to take a nap. he slept deeply for about half an hour in almost exactly the same position and made a great little sketch.

A working and me doodling in the living room of his Otze farmhouse

the farmhouse is huge and the largest room in it is the living room, which was where Oma and A spent most of their time (i was upstairs reading in A’s bed, mostly). there is a huge glass window that looks out onto the garden and so sort of makes a lovely green fourth wall. i’m not fond of this sketch at all because it’s horribly sloppy but it reminds me of all those afternoons when we just sat around and read, worked, knit, drew in complete silence and serenity.

Failed profile attempt of A

it looks nothing like him. long ways to go before i’m anywhere close to accuracy, i’m afraid.

Oma dozing off while watching the news, her daily routine

Oma’s routine was to turn on the telly to watch the news, but to eventually doze off while doing so. this is a more stylised rendition of her sleeping profile.

A, his Opa and myself running out of ink

40 minutes before my flight out of Hamburg to Paris. we’re sitting in Opa’s nursing home room and reminding him of things and people he wants to be reminded of. it was all in German and i could do little else but smile and look géniale, so i decided to sketch instead. the pen-brush ran out of ink shortly so i couldn’t really texture anything properly. Opa asked to see the sketch at the end and remarked kindly that i got his size right.

today is my last day in paris until late august. i’m sitting in the hallowed halls of sciences po paris proper, leeching off the internet and waiting around homeless for another couple of hours before i head off to london. it has taken 3 years to get to the paris campus and in a month or so i will see if life in paris as a scpo student truly lives up to its hype. so far, it is promising. a year of being away from europe has not exaggerated my memory of france one bit. i’m still in love with the country, in agony with its banks. sciences po, on the other hand, has been exceeding expectations. life appears to be a lot more gratifying when one is at the mothercampus and is a graduate student. the level of professionalism i have been experiencing is a really nice surprise.

A left early this morning, puffy-eyed and with a large tuft of hair waving gently as though caught in a perpetual airlift. we padded about our summer apartment for the last time in our pyjamas and got his things together, collected remaining pieces of trash and wiped the table tops clean. while packing he stepped into the melted ice on the floor that was leaking out from our defrosted fridge and left a small trail of muddy puddles around the kitchen but i just felt too sad to protest. he left gently, going down the spiraling stairs quietly and with a soft farewell. i waited at the window to see him come out onto the street. we waved goodbye three times. we will see each other again in 7 days. this time in oxford.

for the rest of the day i cleaned up the apartment and waited nervously for the landlady to come. i must have looked out onto the street a thousand times, scanning the sidewalks for a stern, bespectacled lady striding purposefully towards 3 rue augereau but i still managed to miss her. she interrupted my reading with the doorbell exactly the way i had imagined all day that she would. some 5 minutes later, i was out on the streets with all my bags and trundled slowly to the metro.

i will be moving about like this for a while. since leaving UCSD, i’ve been to jon’s place, to chicago, to munich and then paris, each time with anywhere between 20 – 70kg of things. more places next will be london, oxford, bristol, amsterdam (yes!), ötze before i come back to paris and restart my life. i am tired and broke but it has all been worth it.

they make me think of sex – though at the time sex to me was that incomprehensible taboo of adults stripping naked and getting close to each other – because of the way those old magazines smelled. a sophisticated waft of stale talcum powder which i had thought was dust, of dry armpits, of the skin of an old person… it was a peculiar scent that to me blended in with images of a world filled with adult secrets like naked bodies, full breasts and erect nipples, pubic hair. lust was incomprehensible to me at the time, yet there were books on the shelves in the living room which nobody read or seemed to even remember, filled with pointed references to this mystifying idea of copulation and nakedness. graphic books filled with lewd and rabid imagery that were not meant for children, much more non-american ones, but were handed to me anyway because my unwitting parents believed all comics were meant for children. in this way, MAD’s cover wide grin with the gap in his front teeth and oval american freckles somehow became as much a part of my limited childhood consciousness as the bland adventures of peter and jane.

opening up the pages of Read Yourself Raw, i am again hit with the same wave of warped erotica that accompanied those scrambled afternoons of indiscriminate readings. the book is as old as i am, but i am somehow still feeling young and tainted – all over again – from the same talcum powder smell and the even starker brutality of these comics that make no pretensions to mollycuddle my sensibilities. only now the exhiliration, revulsion and confusion that i am met with comes with a host of new considerations: am i still just too young, or am i now just too asian, too conservative, too undiscerning for such literature?

contemporary writing, and by this i suppose i mean post-90’s writing, doesn’t seem to even touch the same level of haunting talcum powder sensations that RYR does. is it because i’m not reading enough?

impressions after an afternoon of Be A Nose

if you look for it you can just about make out the highlighter yellow emitting from the flashlight. mouse and flashlight take up the focus point because i liked page 38 from spiegelman’s 1983 sketchbook best. and no, didn’t use the books as reference, just picked out the impressions that hit me the hardest.

Le Havre, France, 2009

Desk I barely used

Books and assortments

La Jolla, CA, USA, 2011.

Desk I sometimes use

My substitute bookshelf