I lived in France for a little while. Well, a little over a year and I'm not even sure if it qualifies as "living" as I was a five-day-commuter - I stayed in a flat in France Monday-Friday and came home at weekends. It's not an ideal lifestyle but you might be surprised how many people do it in Europe, both within their own countries and between two others.
So, though I may not have thought this arrangement made me a permanent resident of France, the French state - in all its gloire - certainly did. Which meant that I had to have a Titre de Séjour, a foreigner's ID card - special version for EU citizens.
My employer in France wasn't used to having expats (which is what what white middle class immigrants are called to distinguish them from, well, immigrants) and wasn't much help about how to go about getting such a thing.
- "You get it from the police", said the HR lady confidently
- "Which police, France has three different police forces, or is it four?"
Eyebrows rise in exasperation - "Well, not the Gendarmerie, obviously, because they're the Ministry of Defence and of course not the Police Municipale because they are, obviously, not a national force so don't deal with such matters. Logically, that means the Police Nationale whose HQ you will find at your local Préfecture. But perhaps your first enquiry should be your local Mairie anyway, they will know."
Obviously, obviously, logically - welcome to France, the land of evident truth and undeniable logic, as long as you understand the French version of life's universal rules which are, obviously, the only ones worthy of the name.
I went to the Mairie the next morning in the small town where I lived weekdays and in mangled French asked how I got a Carte de Séjour.
It isn't true that all French bureaucrats are bloody-minded and xenophobic, just many of them. Fortunately the nice middle-aged lady on the Mairie desk was not one of them and was clearly entertained by a foreigner providing a diversion from the daily routine of complaints about planning decisions, bin collections and dogs fouling the streets, which on the abundant evidence must take up a lot of time in France.
She didn't know, but she wanted to help. She asked her colleagues, who clucked sympathetically ("Ah, le pauvre!" - "Poor soul!") and they engaged in a debate (possibly involving philosophy but they lost me) which came to the conclusion that it was indeed the Préfecture.
Great, and where is that exactly?
Ah, the poor soul doesn't know where the Préfecture is! What a shame! (Another discussion that may have involved Sartre, who knows). It is of course in the main town of the department!
Which is?
Eventually I got the address of the Préfecture, in a town not far away which was a bit of a dump - much like many similar ones in a nearly every country in Europe, formerly industrial and now specialising in closed shops, haggard girls pushing buggies, kebab shops and blokes in track suits and beanie hats waiting for the pubs and bookies to open.
Though often in France the pub and the bookie ("PMU") are conveniently located in the same place and open at breakfast time to enable you to bet and then drink to forget your losses as soon as possible - and all without having to get up from the bar.
I also established that it was indeed the local HQ of the Police Nationale, whose responsibilities included making sure that France knew exactly how many foreigners it had, where they come from, where they lived and just about everything else about them. If you are British this is a strange idea, but not if you come from nearly every other European country where ID cards and population registration are the norm.
But it wasn't there. Or rather, it was there, but as lady who was much closer to the stereotype of a French bureaucrat told me, the correct branch office of the Préfecture was "of course" called the Bureau des Étrangers ("Office of Foreigners" - welcome to France!) and was "of course" on the edge of town. "Edge of town" has a meaning in French towns that it might not have in other countries.
Suburb is an innocuous word and "banlieue" is on one level just the French version, but whereas "suburb" in anglophone countries may conjure up images of law-abiding, middling-prosperous dullness, well kept lawns and car-washing on Sundays - that is not necessarily the case in France. Yes there are suburbs like that, but there are also huge estates of tower blocks, ringing many cities, where the disciples of Le Corbusier inflicted their worst on people who couldn't afford a choice; where there is often high unemployment and large minority populations who can be forgiven for thinking they have been dumped out of sight.
The Bureau des Étrangers was in the town's miniature equivalent. A collection of hideous
cubes of cheap, damp-stain-marked 1960s concrete worthy of a Moscow ring-road, liberally decorated with graffiti and discarded furniture which at least brightened the place up a bit. At the centre of this labyrinth was a parade of run-down shops, all with grills on every glass surface. In the middle of this parade was - Le Bureau - a small, utilitarian office consisting of a frosted, wired glass frontage, a three-window counter and grey lino waiting area with a couple of plastic chairs.
The location spoke volumes about who the French state thought were likely to be its biggest customers - the "étrangers" they had in mind when they opened this office were not middle class white people from other EU countries. And they were right, judging from the sample of other supplicants when I entered the office and joined the queue of what appeared to be mainly Senegalese and Ivorians, and mainly women.
It was a colourful, noisy and jolly gathering - much high volume chatter and ribald cackling from the brightly dressed ladies though not at my expense - though I certainly attracted some attention as probably the first grey-haired northern European in a blue suit they had seen in there in a little while. One of them asked me if I was really in the right place and was intrigued by the idea that Europeans needed "papiers" too.
I had prepared myself for this visit with multiple copies of required documents - in other words, absolutely everything that linked me to France - my passport, my employment contract, my rental agreement and even the medical certificate of fitness which must be issued by a state-appointed doctor before you start work, plus six passport photos from the booth in Carrefour.
The fonctionnaire behind the grilled counter was himself of North African extraction. However it must have been several generations as he was fully acculturated in the obduracy of his species. He was a guardian of the integrity of the French state, a builder of hurdles, a raiser of eyebrows and sucker of teeth, a scrutineer of dossiers - par excellence, as we say in English. This was to be no formality. The Carte de Séjour was a singular honour which he could bestow upon me only if I proved worthy.
The forms were scanned for even the slightest error or correction. The employment contract was read in detail, I was asked to confirm that this was indeed my salary - no secrets to be withheld from Marianne - eyebrows were raised. The tenancy agreement. This is your address? This is your landlord and his address? You are registered with the tax authorities?
Clearing the last hurdle I unwisely smiled and said "Wow (spelled Ouaou, of course) c'est compliqué, non?" Eyebrows raised, no smile. "Non, monsieur, c'est pas compliqué, c'est correct." I don't care what you do in your country, in France we do things the right way - as everyone should, but few are wise enough to follow our example.
Another scan of the contents of my dossier, another count of the photographs to make sure one hadn't disappeared in the last 30 seconds to provide an opportunity to deny my application. Grudgingly he had to concede that all was in order. Maybe later he would bully some poor unsuspecting Malian lady who had mis-spelled her address, to make up for his disappointment.
Foolishly, I had expected this office to actually issue me with a card but it turned out that its function was merely to accept applications or, probably more accurately, to act as a barrier to limit the number of applications that were accepted. So I hovered at the counter, evidently not dismissed by the fonctionnaire, not confident enough of my French to find the equivalent of "Is that it then?" in case I said it in such a familiar manner that Rachid took it as a mortal insult to the honour of the Republic, wondering if he would just feed the data into his computer, upload a scan of the photo and crank out an ID card.
I began wondering what the French for "Kafka-esque" was. It's probably Kafka-esque.
I didn't move, he didn't move. A long look, eyebrows raised, "Monsieur?" Deep breath, hope it's not an insult, "Et, um, qu'est-ce qui se passe, um, ensuite" A little smile, then, in English, "In ze post, sair, two weeks."
