I often see an old African man lugging his wares endlessly from restaurant to bistro: leather belts, knock-off purses, bracelets of all kinds, and always the toys with the pulsing neon lights and repetitive sound effects. He is fond of banging a little drum-like noise maker and repeating the same tired phrase, “African telephone,” as he searches for any eyes that will consent to meet his. We have never actually seen him make a sale, even though we have watched him make his rounds for three years now. Today, I am eating lunch alone, so I take a little more time to examine his sales pitch, and to see if he is really selling what is so obvious draped over his shoulders and in his hands. I am trying to imagine him as a drug dealer or even an undercover cop. I can’t quite make him fit either, so I chalk him up as just another aging spy, out to pasture on the Cote d’Azur. There seem to be a lot of us here.
Later in the day, I catch up with him in another little alley, still offering the same pitch, and still not selling anything that I could see. What I did notice was that he knew a lot of local people, and he was taking the time to stop and share a few words and a laugh with each. Maybe he is a pensioner whose wife shoos him out of the house so that he won’t mope around and lament what the years and genetics have done to him. I can almost hear her say, “Husband… get up; go make us some money.” But of course, he makes no real money for the most part. He gets up, takes the bus from Nice, and makes his rounds. He leaves nothing behind but handshakes, smiles, and well-wishes.
There is a little beach nearby called La Petite Afrique (little Africa). No one seems to know why the name. It is sandy, sporting palm trees and clean water; maybe that is enough to earn the honor. But I think immediately of the old man selling his wares, and of countless others I have hurried past in Florence, or Venice, or Paris, rarely even offering a bonjour or a ciao. They flee to Europe because there is nowhere else to go if they wish for survival for themselves and their families. This must be their beach, I think. Look as hard as I can, though, it does not appear that any of them have discovered it yet.
