Nonfiction

 

 

The Fly­ing Roof

Mid­way through eat­ing a cucum­ber my grand­son asked, “Are we going to live in this house for ever and ever?” We held our breath – his mother, his grand­fa­ther and I – because this child’s sim­ple ques­tion had no pos­si­ble answer within the course of our shared his­tory. Except, per­haps, “Who on Earth lives for ever and ever?” But that is no answer for a child who has only been on Earth five years.

We were sit­ting around the table, eat­ing a meal, some­thing roasted; every­thing would be alright. This wasn’t about home­less­ness (not yet). I tried a quick response: “Well…we may. Do you want more pota­toes?’ He paused. Eyed me. A blowfly was buzzing in the stillness.

How can we ratio­nalise imper­ma­nence – not the exis­ten­tial kind of imper­ma­nence, the “liv­ing in the moment” kind, but the imper­ma­nence of inse­cu­rity and lack of choice, of loss and exile? Per­haps I could’ve replied, “Life is a big box of lucky dips!” But right then I didn’t have the courage to speak. My voice would have betrayed me.

In the night, there’s the per­pet­ual sound of crick­ets, like in the movies, as if an unex­pected, con­se­quen­tial event is about to unfold. But hasn’t every­thing already hap­pened? I brace myself against my pillow.

 

I was about six when I under­stood the idea of home. My mother had decided to leave Paris, her city of loss, for a brighter life in the South. We carted our suit­case around Mont­pel­lier for many months.

One evening, in the deserted wait­ing room of a train sta­tion, two police­men arrest us for vagrancy. At the police sta­tion, my mother has to show her “papers” and answer ques­tions. A black tele­phone: Allo? Armée du Salut? No beds for us at the Sal­va­tion Army. And then, just like that, a police­man says he is tak­ing us to his house for the night.

All I will remem­ber from the policeman’s house is the pecu­liar rit­ual per­formed in the kitchen. After din­ner, when the dishes have been cleared and the small square of table­cloth wiped clean, the two chil­dren set the table for break­fast. They lay out four upside-down bowls – for the hot choco­late or cof­fee in which but­tered half baguettes will be dipped – along with spoons, but­ter knives, a dish of white sugar cubes.

“We will be six for tomor­row,” says the mother, and the chil­dren add two bowls and spoons.

 

House-dreaming has been in my body for­ever. Always, in dreams, in day-dreams, in con­ver­sa­tion, in writ­ing – there is the house, nes­tled in the form of a wish, lodged in some cor­ner of me. A minis­cule model of shel­ter, with all its poten­tial for know­ing peace, com­fort, a ray of sun, crumbs on the kitchen table. The world out­side sep­a­rated from the world inside. A wish for per­ma­nence. Always.

“The house shel­ters day­dream­ing, the house pro­tects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” French philoso­pher Gas­ton Bachelard doesn’t pri­ori­tise own­er­ship of the house. For him, shel­ter is about expe­ri­enc­ing a moment in time: being cocooned inside the house, the fra­grance of laven­der in a linen cup­board. In The Poet­ics of Space, he lists every­thing that belongs to the house: dwellers, win­dows, doors, door­knobs, cup­boards, draw­ers, attics, cel­lars, the gar­den. This is, per­haps, a mid­dle­class notion of the hum­ble home, and who gets to occupy it.

Bachelard never men­tions the word “home­less”. In the count­less tem­po­rary houses and shel­ters I have known in my life, I never belonged to the house. Nor did I “dream in peace”.

I am sixty-five. I don’t own a house and my sav­ings are inad­e­quate. At any moment, I could become one of the “hid­den home­less”, night-sheltering away from pub­lic eyes, hid­ing from the ele­ments, from ani­mals and odd humans, icy winds, stings, sharp objects.

 

A mid-winter storm is rag­ing out­side bend­ing and destroy­ing. I remem­ber that long-gone day when the cold Mis­tral blew, rat­tling the lock my mother pried open to let us into that wooden car­a­van. On the deserted beach of Palavas, at the edge of the inhab­ited world, sur­rounded by strangers’ hol­i­day para­pher­na­lia, my mother whis­pered a story about her happy child­hood in Turkey. But the sea roared, a fierce Shut up now! kind of roar, and I fell asleep in her arms.

Enough, I tell myself. Block your ears to the wind and go to sleep. For­get about the hous­ing crisis!

 

Older women are the fastest-growing group of peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness in Aus­tralia. Free-falling into the mar­gins, hov­er­ing at the bot­tom of end­less gov­ern­ment hous­ing lists, wait­ing for non-existent homes. There are aging women roam­ing the coun­try in bombed-out camper­vans, pre­tend­ing to be happy campers. (Avoid iso­lated camp­ing sites! Shower in gas sta­tions, or use Wet Wipes. Truck­ies will usu­ally help if you break down.)

Aus­tralia is no coun­try for old women.

 

This is an excerpt from a per­sonal essay which appears in the book  We Are Here: Sto­ries of Home, Place & Belong­ing (Affirm Press, edited by Meg Mundell, Novem­ber 2019), a col­lec­tion of true sto­ries by peo­ple who have expe­ri­enced homelessness.

~ ~ ~

 

 

A Flight of Fancy

A voice of honey announced the names of des­ti­na­tions as if those places were towns in Utopia. Quim­per, Nantes, Bor­deaux, La Rochelle… I was run­ning late, jostling amid the Sat­ur­day morn­ing crowds in the Mont­par­nasse train sta­tion, scan­ning the row of TGV trains, their bullet-noses nudg­ing the edge of the depar­ture hall. The train would take me to a meet­ing with French philoso­pher Paul Vir­ilio, also known as The Priest of Speed. I dreaded the image of the Pro­fes­sor wait­ing in vain out­side the sta­tion in La Rochelle hold­ing, as agreed, a sign marked ‘Vir­ilio’ – he who doesn’t own a mobile phone.

I had landed a few days ear­lier in Paris’s back­wa­ter air­port of Orly, exit­ing towards the bus sta­tion only to flee in tan­dem with another woman pas­sen­ger: a man was uri­nat­ing against the AdShel mechan­i­cal poster that was alter­nat­ing images of brood­ing femmes and brainy lap­tops. The next day, walk­ing along the banks of the Seine I would be over­pow­ered by the stench of piss. How­ever, Paris was merely a stopover on my way to the meet­ing at La Rochelle. Time was clos­ing on me in Mont­par­nasse, fol­low­ing a wres­tle with the vend­ing machine that refused to dis­pense my online pre­paid ticket – some­thing to do with the non-French ori­gins of my Visa card, as if an Aus­tralian tourist had no busi­ness on that plat­form. From the ticket office I was swept with the human swarms that rolled and shifted, eager to board the Train à Grande Vitesse that would pro­pel us away from the big smoke, plung­ing inside the purpose-built con­crete canals, occa­sional sec­tions of real land­scape hurtling at us then van­ish­ing, a flight of fancy between Paris and La Rochelle. If only I can catch that train, I thought, I will be sit­ting still for most of the three-and-a-half hours of the jour­ney, writ­ing in my note­book five hun­dred times I shall always arrive to a big train sta­tion one full hour before departure.

A few days ear­lier still, sit­ting under an umbrella on the French Riv­iera I had been prepar­ing for the meet­ing, jot­ting in my note­book quotes and sum­maries of writ­ings by Vir­ilio and about Vir­ilio. From Mel­bourne to Mel­bourne in a con­vo­luted jour­ney of fast travel – nev­er­the­less seden­tary above the clouds – I would have clocked nine flights, gloss­ing over places of inter­est, near­ing the prac­tice which Vir­ilio calls polar iner­tia. As found in my note­book: ‘The seden­taries of trans­porta­tion are very sim­ply trav­ellers who buy a plane ticket at Roissy-en-France…for Roissy. They go around the world as fast as pos­si­ble with­out going any­where, barely mak­ing the nec­es­sary refu­elling stop…a cir­cu­lar voy­age which puts imme­di­acy to the test…I think it’s a form of desire for inertia…’

I had paid 15 euros to occupy a sun-lounger on a pri­vate beach where bod­ies – many botoxed, top­less retirees of both sexes – were marooned for hours under their hard-tanning duties. I was in the here and there, paus­ing between flights, attempt­ing a pré­cis of Virilio’s Envi­ron­ment Con­trol. In his work on per­cep­tion, Vir­ilio argues that, with the tech­nol­ogy of dig­i­tal trans­mis­sion, it is speed that makes us see, rather than light. He pon­ders about the impli­ca­tions for the trans­parency of air, water and glass – which con­sti­tute the vis­i­ble ‘real-space’ – when ‘real-time’ replaces the notion of inter­val and dis­tance, words that res­onated at the edge of the Aztec turquoise water. I had no lap­top, only books, paper and pen. Grains of sand lodged between the pages.
I can still see myself on the plat­form in Mont­par­nasse, fly­ing in that slow-mo filmic pro­jec­tion of the self, under the immense sky­light, in the chaos of noise and urgency. And next I was sit­ting in my allo­cated seat, pant­ing, the train tak­ing its time and finally depart­ing sud­denly and smoothly as a three-wheeled jogger-pram, the push­ing hands invis­i­ble to the tod­dler sit­ting inside it.
Under the influ­ence of veloc­ity, I read Ian James’s Paul Vir­ilio, words on train travel and the body’s move­ment in space: ‘The spread of the land­scape which might oth­er­wise sur­round and envelop us is deformed by rapid move­ment; it is not some­thing expe­ri­enced in its mate­r­ial dimen­sion as such since our body does not expe­ri­ence the fatigue or the extended delay of pass­ing across it on foot.’

 

This is an excerpt from A Flight of Fancy, by Josiane Behmoiras, first pub­lished in HEAT 21, Gira­mondo Pub­lish­ing, Syd­ney