Dinner In Bordeaux

Standing behind the store counter, the man quickly scribbled notes on a sheet of wrapping paper as he took his customer’s telephone order. “Yes Madam, we have that. Yes, the Brie is perfect. I just cut a wedge for a customer – it’s soft and consistent. Yes, right away,” he said putting down the telephone. Then he set about assembling her request, filling two large bags. Turning to his stock boy, “Umar, take this order to Madame Blanchard’s apartment. She is having guests tonight and will need these things promptly.”

It was almost 3 p.m. on that sunny Tuesday afternoon in Paris. The young Pakistani acknowledged the request and picked up the two large shopping bags full of fruit, cheese, crackers, black bread, and other assorted specialty items the proprietor of Jouvair’s Gourmet Food Shop sold to his customers on the Left Bank from his location in the 6^th Arrondissement on Rue Cherche Midi and Rue Saint Placade near the Boulevard Raspail.

Umar Qazi Jehangir left the shop and walked down Cherche Midi towards Rue Abbe Gregoire and his destination near the hospital on Rue de Sevres. The bright sunlight gave the dull sandstone buildings a bluish hue and highlighted the grime accumulated over the course of some two hundred years, when this section of Paris had sprung to life. He noted the police vans and the black Citroen limousine blocking the street outside Restaurant Chez Marlotte. Umar frowned when he thought of the French President, Jacques Chirac, and his many special privileges, while his own family members barely subsisted in their village in Pakistan. They don’t know how many apartments Chirac has in Paris. That Juppe –the guy who’s Mayor of Bordeaux and a Deputy in the Assemblie Nationale – they discovered he had five apartments in Paris and the people don’t seem to care.

He felt useless in this limiting job, pretending to be another hapless immigrant working in a position that no young Frenchman would consider as suitable employment. These people must be punished for their indolent ways, he thought, while wondering when his time would come.

In Jouvair’s Gourmet Food Shop he swept and mopped the floors, stocked the shelves and delivered exotic and expensive food items that for much of his life he had no idea even existed. I’m right under the nose of the President of France - when will I get my chance, he thought to himself on many occasions.

Umar turned right on Rue Abbe Gregiore and headed towards the Hospital Laennec walking between the rays of afternoon sunlight reflecting off the windows set in the mansard roofs in the top floors of the buildings. In the middle of the narrow street he crossed over its peaked cobbled roadway and entered the foyer of a five-story apartment building. He pushed the button next to Madame Blanchard’s name and waited for a voice. He identified himself and a buzzer promptly sounded admitting him to the inner hallway.

As Umar entered this imposing area he was closely watched. He noticed the door to the hallway apartment was slightly ajar and the eyes of an old woman deeply set in her wrinkled faced focused intensely on his presence. He smiled and nodded his head to the building concierge and stated he was from the Gourmet Shop making a delivery to Madame Blanchard. Nosy – she must know everything that goes on in this place. With this formality behind him he looked around the imposing vestibule of the Nineteenth Century building.

While such entrance areas are common in many of the older buildings of Paris, this was sheer opulence to this young man of humble origins. It was shaped in the form of a half circle with a marble staircase rising five stories along the curved wall to a clear glass skylight at the roof. Inside the staircase was the elegant iron latticework of the elevator shaft in which a slowly moving car delivered the building occupants and their guests to their respective destinations. There were two commodious apartments on each floor. Madame Blanchard lived in the one on the top floor to the right of the elevator.

He looked up at the descending capsule making its way towards him and back at the old woman still observing him from her doorway wondering if the thing was safe and why the concierge looked at him with such suspicion. I’m not French, so I’m not to be trusted. They don’t even accept the French Arabs. When the rickety elevator finally arrived at the premier etage or lobby level, Umar entered the cell-like contraption and cautiously pressed the button for the fifth etage.