Another ride with Monsieur Kamalt

I press the buzzer to open the door as the taxi pulls up at rue August Blanche. Monsieur Kamalt jumps out. He is dressed in avocado pants with a matching print shirt that would do well in Florida. His hand is out stretched. I notice he has cut his hair short, but his beard is still long. As always he is immaculate.

“Comment-allez vous, Madame Nelson?” he asks and thrusts my suitcase and computer in the trunk and when I tell him well he asks, “Gare du Lyon? Charles de Gaulle? Orly?”

When I say the train station he asks if I am going to Geneva or the South of France. I tell him the later.

He makes sure I am seated before shutting my door and we are off riding along the Seine. For the first time I notice he has a GPS and he tells me he always has it, but doesn’t always use it. There is a sense of relief. I don’t like to be unobservant.

I half watch our progress, half watch the pretty houses as we drive through Neuilly, the home of Sarkozy at least until he moved last month into the presidential palace. Monsieur Kamalt is not the least happy with the results of the French election – too pro American, too pro Israel, he says of the new president.

Again we discuss the situation in the Middle East. He asks how long the American people will put up with Bush? I cannot answer that. I sigh when I think of Cindy Sheehan saying people have more interest in American Idol than what is happening with the war.

He asks me when I will go to the US again, and it is too complicated to explain that I don’t want to go until Habeus Corpus is restored, although I will if there’s an emergency with loved ones.

Nor do I show him the Amnesty International map cut from Le Bleu Matin that has countries with a long list of human rights abuses colored purple. The US is purple. With the map is a list by country of which abuses each country indulges in and the US has one of the longest. I am too ashamed. Becoming Swiss has not alleviated my guilt of not doing enough to protect the democracy that gave me the strength and the skills to be whom I am today. These are not things I want to share with my cab driver no matter how lovely he is.

He asks me about my friend with whom I staying. Why isn’t she married, he asks. I explain she has been too busy with her studies. He thinks she should be married and says he will look for someone. He asks as always about my daughter, who he took to the airport a couple of Christmas’s ago, aware that he was transporting the thing most precious in my life. I only tell him she is still working in human resources.

We scuttle around the Arc de Triumph. The route is well known, not just from these cab rides, but from so many Paris visits.

On other cab trips he has called friends and relatives to introduce me, but it is so early there is almost no traffic, and friends and relatives are either in bed for just making their coffee.
We promise our next conversation will be about what Sarkozy has done as he pulls into the train station.

He hands me my suitcase and computer. “My computer is like your taxi, we cannot work without our tools of trade,” I tell him and he laughs.

He doesn’t say au revoir but A bientôt, and I get final wave as I tug my luggage toward Le Train Bleu for my petit dejeuner and to wait for my train. There is a comfort in the personal.