Photo Essay: Eiffel Tower of My Mind
/Visiting Paris one weekend, I was supposed to see a writer friend who wanted us to meet at Balzac’s house but she had to move to Qatar with her husband, who is a French teacher. I found myself going to the house on my own – I had never been there before, while contemplating about whether I should move back to France after all these years. Russia had just attacked the Ukraine, in late February 2022, highlighting in my mind how much the world has turned upside down since I first arrived in Paris in the early 1990s, after the fall the Berlin Wall, and consequently the break-up of the Soviet Union. Then, the symbol of the Eiffel Tower was just a backdrop in my discovery of a continent far from home. This time around, the surprises it showed me became a focal point.
1) Balzac’s house was recently renovated in the bourgeois 16th arrondissement of Paris. I haven’t read any of his books. A writer friend said never mind, the house was pleasant and people go there for the garden. It was a sunny day in late February. I was in Paris for a weekend, visiting a bourgeois friend who was ill, and he said it was just as well that I hadn’t read Balzac. He insinuated that his books were of the trashy kind. Are we talking about the same Balzac? Mais oui, he said, the Honore de Balzac. The garden was pretty much occupied by people who had the same idea of sunning themselves in this nice little corner. I ordered a bottle of kombucha at the café and waited for one of the wrought iron chairs to be emptied, moving it toward a patch of sunshine when it did– and there it was when I looked up: the Eiffel Tower, the needle part of it.
2) Heading back to the Passy metro station, I changed my mind and decided to cross the neighborhood park also called Passy. I could see shades of the metal, partially covered by the leafless trees along the road. This is the thing about Paris: when you think you’ve seen it all and been everywhere, especially something as iconic and gigantic as the Eiffel Tower, you’re in for a treat. From this west side of the city, I felt like a first-time tourist in awe of this unusual monument the world has loved.
3) I crossed a pathway I didn’t know existed. Some were walking, some were biking. On the map it is the bridge of Bir-Hakeim from the Avenue de President Kennedy. I stopped in my track and gaped, watching the tower in the background of women in Muslim headscarves posing for a groupie; no, not just once, but many times over, as if they had to be very content with the grandeur behind them. A young man offered to take a better shot of them all together, and I took a few shots as well, as discreetly as I could.
4) Lost in this neighborhood. I followed the crowd, but I was certain I was near the River Seine. You don’t get lost once you’re by the river.
5) Walking away from the river, to a district I was more familiar with, I saw two girls taking their sweet time taking pictures of their smiles. What could there be in a narrow street? I turned to peek, et voila, there she was again, this lovely, feminine tower (in all those years I lived in Paris, long ago, it had felt so masculine). This time she was a lady unfurling her secrets, her prowess. She is the omnipresent Eye-Fall Tower; you see her, then you don’t. On a fresh sunny day, she was out soaking in the weather like the rest of us, when winter was too much in a hurry to turn into spring.
6) Even when I wanted to say goodbye to it, it was still there. It wouldn’t go away. I should have known when I stumbled into another crowd who had their cameras and smartphones out, posing at their whim. Arms raised high to get the most of it, all the brightest smiles, all the heads put together, all the display of effervescence. In between the Haussmann buildings stood the Lady Eiffel. By that time I was starving. I’d been walking for about an hour. I chanced upon a Franprix supermarket where I bought a packet of organic biscuits. A croissant ordinaire would have been better, but the thing you need to know about Paris is that there are no good boulangeries in a bourgeois district, and I don’t know why. I asked for the nearest metro – and it was still far on foot. I went in circles, turning around the Quai Branly museum twice, across the Palais de Tokyo and near the Pont de l’Alma over the Seine (where Princess Diana died). Then there was the rue de l’universite right behind, and this was easy, remembering the landmarks, the restaurants in what is the 7th arrondissement. When I stumbled onto the Invalides, with its wide esplanade and its golden dome always demanding attention (because that’s where Napoleon is buried), I knew I could find the nearest underground metro. I kept telling myself, you should say goodbye to Paris, but equally playing in my mind was the thought that I could live here again, if the Eiffel Tower would keep on springing surprises.
Criselda Yabes is a writer and journalist based in Manila. Her most recent books include Crying Mountain (Penguin SEA) on the 1970s rebellion in Mindanao and Broken Islands (Ateneo de Manila University Press) set in the Visayas in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.
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