Inch'Allah

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Sunday August 30th, 2020 – 1:37pm.

The first home we ever bought was a small one-bedroom apartment at 36 rue d’Aubervilliers in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. I love the 19th. Night picnics on the Canal de l’Ourcq, lying in the grass in les Buttes Chaumont, our wedding celebration at the beautiful Mairie du 19ième, cinema en pleine aire at la Villette, le Cabaret Sauvage, le 104. The 19th is hip and gorgeous and, like much of north, north-east Paris, it’s got some parts that are a little rough around the edges. This has always made it seem more real to me.

Our neighborhood was full of North Africans. It was easier to find plantains and okra on our street than it was to find ham and cheese. After little errands near our place I would call out my habitual “À bientôt !” (see you soon!) and I noticed right away that the Muslim shopkeepers would invariably reply with a smiling “Inch’ Allah !” which means roughly, “God willing !” in Arabic. There was nothing sinister or resigned in their reply. It wasn’t an admonishment in any way. But it was a simple and very clear cultural divide: I had evolved with a worldview where I wouldn’t hesitate to say, “See you soon !” and they had evolved with a worldview that allowed at every step of the way for the fact that we don’t always get to decide how life goes.

Fast-forward to 2020 and we westerners are suddenly being confronted on a massive scale with the notion that ‘we don’t always get to decide how life goes.’ All plans are totally tentative. The idea of organizing something for a few months down the road seems laughable. We are all now using qualifiers, “Well, we are hoping to go visit my parents in two weeks, but we’ll just have to see.” “I’m supposed to go to Paris at the end of the month, but who knows?” In reality, it was always the case. There’s never been any guarantee. The rug can get pulled out from under us at any moment, but our comfortable western lives had lulled us into a deep sense of security. An illusion of control.

And oh what a cozy illusion it was!

I saw a screenshot I’d saved in my phone from December 28th, 2019. It read: ‘2019- thanks for the lessons. 2020 - let’s do this!’ When I came across it yesterday I had to laugh. Oh man...2020. I was not ready for you.

A line from Carine Lacroix’s play, Crayons de Couleuvres, comes to mind:
“Nini dit que quand on naît on pleure avant de rire parce qu'on devine déjà tout ce qui se passera après.” - or “Nini says that when we’re born we cry before we laugh because we already know what’s ahead.”

Do we though?

My husband had a horrible car accident when we were thirty. I’ve mostly come to terms with it now but it dramatically altered our lives and the experience was traumatic. For years when I saw photographs of myself from the time just before the accident I had a terrible urge to somehow climb into the photo and warn the girl I saw there, to somehow let her know what was coming. She had no idea.

That’s a blessing, I suppose.

“2020, let’s do this!”

It seems so brazen now. Still, I’m happy I rang in the new year full of hope....

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