By Lee McAuliffe Rambo
The (Dublin, Ga.) Courier-Herald
December 1983
Everybody seeks light at this season.
The brights of parties. The quiet glow of altars. The translucence of beloved faces.
It was a marvel to find myself in the City of Light at Christmastime four years ago. The previous holiday I had flown home for a four-day reunion with my family. But in 1979 I was determined to spend the holidays in Paris; it was an opportunity not likely to come again.
As with offices everywhere, ours was filled with high spirits. The Lebanese with whom I worked were glad for the relative peace of Europe, and the civil war that had sent their Beirut publishing company into exile in Paris had settled into one of its frequent but short-lived calms. The Israelis on our staff celebrated Hanukkah with the hope characteristic of their people. Our Telex link with the Mideast no longer clattered with news of casualties known to my editors – just holiday greetings in Arabic, French and English.
And so there was partying. Hearty Middle Eastern food – stuffed grape leaves and yogurt mixed with oil – and my elegant hosts merry enough to engage in belly-dancing and Frank Sinatra imitations.
And lingering way past the hour of the subway closing.
A friend offered to share a taxi home. She worked with a division of UNESCO concerned with refugees. Not the sort with whom I worked, who could escape armed conflict by plugging into a network of family and colleagues in London and Paris and set up temporary housekeeping abroad. Moira worked for the truly homeless, the country-less, the Algerians and exiles from communist-bloc countries.
The streets of Europe were full of them, she said as we rode, warmed by our wool and the wine, through the majestic avenues.
The cab had just pulled away when I realized that I had left my keys at Mr. Haddad’s apartment. It was two a.m. I dared not wake the concierge, the Portuguese woman who tended my apartment house door and everybody’s comings and goings.
I stood in the lamplight beside the massive door that led to the courtyard, muttered curses and tried to think. My best friend lived in the suburbs of Boulogne; she had no telephone of her own, but shared one with the family from whom she rented her small studio. I was determined I wouldn’t disturb the Barbiers either. Perhaps I had an exaggerated notion of the need to dispel the ugly American reputation.
I pulled out a cigarette.
“Du feu, mademoiselle?”
I started. It was the customary line Frenchmen directed to young, obviously foreign women, particularly those in American jeans. Usually, within five minutes of accepting the courtesy, I invented a husband with the diplomatic corps.
But this was not the habitual Latin Quarter boulevardier in tee-shirt, leather jacket and rakish scarf.
“Du feu?” he said again, holding out a flame that jumped in the stabbing wind. He shielded the match with a trembling hand in a fingerless glove. I could not tell, in the scarce light, if the knuckles were bruised or grimy.
“Oui, merci bien, monsieur,” I said.
The stranger gave me a broad smile. He had very few teeth, very few that were white. He was barely my height. His clothing hung on his body; the shirt of a street-sweeper – the color of which can only be called psychedelic French blue – cinched by a rope, over torn trousers. He wore socks covered with cardboard bound by more rope.
It wasn’t a Parisian’s joking grin at an American accent. I think now that he was delighted that, true to my Southern roots, I had called him “sir.”
“Vous avez perdu vos clés,’’ he said, summing up my trouble. I knew, from his matter-of-fact tone and his husky accent, that he wasn’t French.
Yes, I replied, and I don’t want to wake the concierge and the Metro is closed and I’m freezing.
“Tu es Américaine, n’est-ce pas?’’ he asked, slipping into the familiar form of address as if we were kin or sweethearts.
“Alors, allons à – he broke into English with a giggle – the Embassy American.” He dropped the bundle he was carrying, scraps of carpet, clicked his heels and saluted.
We were in the 16th arrondisement, on avenue Kléber. The embassy was in the eighth, on avenue Gabriel, not far from my office. But I knew I couldn’t make my way through the maze of streets. And, once there, how was I to get in out of the cold? This fellow seemed so sure of himself.
“I know the soldiers there,” he said, “We trade cigarettes.” He pulled his blouse open to reveal cartons of Winstons and Lucky Strikes.
“Here,” he said, as we began to walk. “Have an American cigarette. They taste better and they are better for your health.”
My friend was a Russian Jew. His name was Moïse in French, Moshe in Hebrew. Moses. He had fled the Soviet Union some years ago – he could not remember when, he said – and his wife and son were still there. The boy’s name was Christopher; his mother was a Christian, a Protestant.
As we passed a subway entrance, barred with a grating, Moïse extended an arm to stop me. “I have a friend down there,” he said. “I told him I would bring him some food.”
In the subway light, I saw two filthy, bearded men sprawled on sheets of cardboard just inside the gate. “You can come say hello,” Moïse said, “They’re asleep. They won’t hurt you.”
But I stayed outside. Moïse slinked under the gate, shook the foot of one of the men, and pulled a wheel of cheese out of his sleeve.
“How are you?” he asked his friend. “Here is the cheese. I can’t stay long, I have found this demoiselle who has to go to the American Embassy.”
We walked four kilometers – a little more than two miles – together. Moïse made his living on the black market, doing chores for merchants and earning good and cigarettes and the scrapes of carpet and other goods for barter. His friend was a foreigner without papers also; he was old and sick now, and Moïse and others like him tried to keep him comfortable.
I do not think I was frightened, but bewildered.
At intervals, Moïse would stop and stride up to one of the illuminated street maps, point to a tiny “x” that marked our location, and trace the path that remained. “It isn’t far,” he said. “Here, have another cigarette.”
The embassy shone marble-white, with boxwood wreathes on the gates. The flag was awash in light.
“You stay here just a moment,” Moïse said. He walked up to the gate and called for the Marine, who emerged clapping his white-gloved hands.
“I have this American girl,” Moïse said in English. “She can’t get in her house. And it is the day before your Christmas.”
“Well, I don’t usually do this,” the guard said. “But come on in and you can sleep in the ambassador’s office.”
When I thanked him, the Marine smiled and said he was from Charleston.
I turned to thank Moïse. “It was nothing,” he said, speaking in French again. “Just remember your keys and stay out of the cold.”
And he slipped away.
I buried my nose in the ambassador’s tufted leather sofa, studied the delicate covered buttons and the fine brass upholstery tacks.
And I knew this Christmas would be memorable. For the colored lights on the Eiffel Tower beyond my dormer window, the snow swirling about the spires of Notre Dame, the camaraderie of my Middle Eastern colleagues, the beautiful little magazine that we had launched.
But also because of a Russian Jew with a harsh past and no future, who took me to shelter.
There are moments in life: the Black man who goes for gasoline when your car dies in a ghetto and leaves his empty wallet in exchange for the gas can, the waitress who offers an extra piece of carrot cake with the excuse that it’s going to be throw out anyway, the postal clerk who donates three cents so a very important letter can be on its way. These are our epiphanies. When the lowliest is revealed as a bearer of the Most High.
In this new year, I wish you your portion.
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