I thought I was going on holiday. Instead I feel a bit like a war correspondent.
At the outset of this journey, I wrote from London, which is waking up with a post-Brexit hangover and wondering if a fear of terrorism is metastasizing into a fear of people who are different. Today, I’m in the south of France where the bikini is apparently under threat from the burkini.
I’ve been asked why I would want to spend my vacation in the south of France, which is (a) in France, and (b) not far from Nice, the scene of the senseless violence on Bastille Day, July 14, when 84 people were killed by a man wielding a big truck.
Nonetheless, here I am in Pézenas, a town of about 8,500 people not far from Nice. This is the deep south of France, the Languedoc region, which is named after the language of Oc, its origins lost in antiquity.
Pézenas has been around a long time, but even so, not much has happened. The great French playwright Moliere slept here, and left his name on a number of the bars and hotels, not to mention a room in the museum dedicated to his memory. That’s about it.
It sounds like a backwater, but it’s not. Pézenas is a remarkably civilized place. It has a well-developed local theatre, thanks to the legacy of Moliere. A thriving community of artists and artisans has created a surprisingly large cluster of sophisticated shops throughout the tight, winding cobblestone streets.
The food is remarkable. Every Friday during the summer, the main drag is given over to local producers and chefs who create dishes that you can buy to assemble a meal and join other Pézenois (and buffoonishly unilingual Anglais) at outdoor tables. Of course, the local wines, which uphold the honour of France, are in plentiful supply.
A local boulangerie has transferred about 10 pounds to my mid-section.
And did I mention that there has been one cloudy day in August?
The point of all this is that Pézenas is another way to spell Paradise, and it is only one small town among many dotted across the golden landscape of southern France and the Riviera. It hardly seems like the beachhead for the roiling clash of cultures that is playing out across Europe.
Yet, the latest outrage in that clash took place about the same distance from here as North Vancouver is to Kamloops — committed by a ferocious, incoherent force.
People are looking for answers, but they’re mainly trying to restore Paradise Lost, as quickly as possible.
Oddly, more than 30 communities around the Riviera have decided the best way is to ban the burkini, the swimming equivalent of the traditional religious clothing that many Muslim women have adopted. Yes, the highest court in the land has struck these various bans down, but the mayor of Nice, among others, has defied the ban, declaring the burkini a “provocation” by fundamentalist Muslims. It’s his way of getting back at the lunatic jihadist of Bastille Day; the burkini is an easy target.
A brief moment ago in this land of millennia, in the ’50s, it was a crime to wear a bikini on the local beaches, but none of the local officials have much patience with the irony. These days, many women choose to go topless at the beach, and somehow that’s been folded into the essential culture of France.
France is famous for liberty, equality and fraternity, none of which are upheld in the ban on burkinis. But there’s also “laicité,” often cited with the other three, included in Article 1 of the French constitution, which declares that France is a secular state, the very antithesis of the theocracy sought by the radical Islamists who now hide among the five million Muslims who call France home.
Somehow, laicité trumps the other three. At this point in time, many in France feel more threatened by the assault on the secular state than by the assault on their liberty, not to mention the self-afflicted wounds to their dignity, as police are given the task of demanding women take it off or face what amounts to a $45 fine.
There is hardly a universal consensus. Many consider the ban racist, misogynist and ridiculous. But that hasn’t stopped eternal French presidential candidate Nicholas Sarkozy from promising to implement a nationwide ban if elected.
It’s a proposal that is popular with some on the sidewalk cafes in Pézenas, where it’s also OK to smoke and drink at 9 a.m. No one’s talking about banning any of that, of course. Liberty, etc. doesn’t have to be good for you.
Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. [email protected]
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