DJIMON

By Tom Kando
 
    In October, my wife Anita and I took a  taxi from our Paris hotel on the  Boulevard Saint Jacques to the Gare de Lyon, to  take  the train to the  South of France.
               
    The taxi driver picked us up around nine in the morning. He was a big,  talkative young  man from the Cote d’Ivoire. Looked a lot like Djimon Hounsou, the handsome actor in the movie Gladiator. These days, the  probability that you’ll be driven by a (native) French taxi driver in Paris is nil. The city has become so “diverse,” there are very few  Frenchmen left who live there,  plus the taxi business in all cities always attracts a lot of  immigrants from poorer countries. The last half dozen times we took a cab in Paris, the drivers were from Algeria, Ukraine, Senegal, Cap Verde, Morocco (a woman) and now the Ivory Coast. 

    These drivers were all  friendly and  colorful, and today’s man - we’ll call him Djimon - is no exception. He hits the boulevard like the 24-hour Le Mans race track. Anita is petrified, but I am enjoying it. Back home in California, Anita always accuses me of driving too wildly. Yet compared to Djimon, I drive like a octogenarian woman on Valium.
    However, to Anita’s delight, the morning Paris  traffic lives up to its reputation, i.e. we are soon stuck in jams so monumental as to make those on L.A. freeways pale in comparison. Luckily, our train isn’t scheduled to leave until noon, and  the railroad station is only four miles away. At times, we stand still long enough for Anita and me to get out of the cab and buy ourselves a café au lait at a nearby sidewalk café.
    So Djimon’s driving isn’t hair-raising after all. Still, his maneuvers and his communications with other drivers keep the situation interesting. I have long noticed that the primary rule for successful Paris driving is to always take advantage of any available open space whatsoever, even if it’s only a couple of centimeters. Thus, if you can squeeze between two other cars with zero space left, you must do it, and do it tout de suite, or else someone else will, and you’ll never move forward. If you occasionally miscalculate and you don’t quite fit in, no big deal, just one more scratch or dent on your Peugeot or Citroen. I don’t recall the last time I saw an unscratched or undented car in Paris.

    Just as Djimon begins to back up his honking at another taxi with some four-letter verbal argumentation, his phone rings. Good, I tell myself. That’ll distract him from the  incipient traffic altercation.
    Judging from Djimon’s reaction, the caller is a woman, and it’s about an alleged unpaid bill. Djimon explodes: “Hey Madame, I paid that bill a long time ago, and I can prove it! foutez-moi la
paix!( f..... you!)”
    However, the lady persists, and she threatens with collection, legal action, and even jail and expulsion back to Africa.

    Then, just what I had been afraid of,  happens: Djimon turns around from behind the wheel and addresses us, trying to involve us in his problem. “They are  threatening me!” he announces in a booming voice. “They  want me to pay  bill which  already paid!” He starts telling us some incomprehensible story, interlaced with outcries like,  “It’s outrageous! Merde to all Frenchmen, Merde to all Europeans!  You  all a bunch of racists!”

    “How terrible,” I say, doing my very best to sound sympathetic, “...actually, we are not from here...”
    Djimon goes  back to  shouting at the woman on the phone. He tells her that he is driving over to their office right now  to teach them a lesson, and he hangs up.

    Shit! Is he taking us with him on the warpath, instead of the railroad station? I begin to plan our escape. I tell Anita to get ready to jump out of the car at the next stoplight or the next traffic jam, whichever comes first. But what about our baggage in the trunk?

    The phone rings again. Same woman. She has switched to the appeasement mode, saying, “Monsieur Djimon, I am just a secretary doing my job. We’ll research the matter. Don’t worry, we wont take any action. You don’t have to come over to the office now.”

    Suddenly Djimon’s face shows the biggest smile I ever saw. The storm blows over as quickly  as it blew in. He turns to us again and says, beaming,  “Ha! You see, all you have to do is be brave! Little people cannot allow  Frenchmen to step everywhere  on  us!” and then he asks, “you not Frenchman?  You come from where ?”

    “California,” I confess with apprehension, knowing how hostile much of the world is to Americans. If Djimon hates the French, he must hate Americans even more, I surmise. On the other hand, it has long been a principle of mine to never apologize for or hide the fact that I am an American. I find  Americans who travel in Europe and say that they are Canadians despicable cowards.

    But I am pleasantly surprised. As soon as Djimon finds out where we are from, he exudes admiration: “Oh bravo! La Californie, c’est magnifique! San Francisco!  Golden Gate Bridge!
One day I  go to America. It is  promised land!”

    And then, a brilliant idea hits him: “I come and visit you, okay? My wife and children  stay in your house, and in return, you come and stay in my family  house  in the Cote d’Ivoire, yes? My father has  big house in Abidjan. We go back  every year. You know Cote d’Ivoire? Is very beautiful. You come and be our guest. We eat very good food, you stay as long as you want, yes?”
                                                               
    “Hmm...” Anita and I aren’t quite sure about this exchange program. Sounds exciting, but maybe we should think about it. That’s what we tell Djimon.

    We arrive at the Gare de Lyon. Djimon is not just nice, he is effusive. We give him a generous tip, and we even hug each other. Next year in Abidjan maybe?

© Tom Kando 2014



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