The crib notes version of the crazy tale is that I was out at La Défense, headed back into the city to the Great Canadian Pub around 11pm, made some new friends, ended up at a Scottish Pub just off Quai des Grands Augustins at about 4am (Paris doesn't have a true last call of sorts). Lots of beers and cigarettes were consumed in the various bars our group of eight had visited prior to the Scottish pub.
I went to the bathroom, and returned to find my jacket rifled through. Cell phone and wallet were both gone. Interestingly enough, my inhaler and Navigo (transport pass) were spared.
To this day, I think it was the staff of the pub that pulled off the great heist. They weren't helpful after the incident, and seemed rushed to get our party out of the pub.
That night ended with me waiting for the first train back to Conflans Sainte Honorine. After I realized what had happened, I was disheveled and not really 'there' mentally. One of my friends from that night was with me as the clock struck 5 am. We tried to get into a cafe (Pub St Michel if memory serves me correctly), but the bouncer deemed me too drunk and didn't allow us in.
I finally caught the train from Chatalet les Halles to Gare St Lazare, then to Argentueil where I waited for an hour before finally boarding the train. Last stop: Conflans Sainte Honorine.
In terms of feeling down and out, nothing compares to waking up from what seemed like a drunken stupor. I crashed the moment I got home (around 6:30 am), and slept for three hours before it began to hit me. I still couldn't believe what happened.
My night had literally started with the sentence, "Excusez-moi Monsieur, vous venez de Toronto?"
It ended with me out of a $400 smartphone, all my credit and debit cards, and in need of a major shower due to the lingering odor of cigarettes, beer, and sadness.
Sometimes life evens our experiences out and keeps us humble and our heads at just the right size.
Consider what had happened six nights before I was robbed…
My pal in Paris, Meech, is a big Seattle Seahawks fan, so the gang headed to the Great Canadian Pub to watch the NFC Championship game, which naturally was starting at an odd Parisien hour (midnight I believe). We watched it all, sharing great laughs, a few pitchers, and reveling in the fact that we were actually living in this fairy-tale of a city.
The game ended around 3 am. My friends all lived around the same banlieus of the city, while I was in the opposite end. They boarded their night bus together, leaving the Edmontonian to fend for himself.
I stumbled around the Notre Dame area, which I knew quite well. That quarter was where my office at WAN IFRA was. Us amis usually ended up at a cafe or bar in the Notre Dame-Chatalet-Maurais area.
At that moment, around 3 am, I had two choices…either walk to Gare St Lazare, which was in the 8th arrondisement, where I could catch the night bus back to Conflans. Or I could bumble around the city until the first train, at 5:30 am. After making small talk with some nice locals, I decided on stumbling around.
I remember walking on the platform in front of the Centre Pompidou. I was a bit inebriated, and was startled to feel rats crawling underneath my feet. I headed to my office on rue Beaubourg (a five minute walk from Pompy) and relax there for three hours.
The night ended without a whimper; I slept in my office, then in my cozy Parisien suburb and called my parents later that day, recounting the legendary Parisien evening (except where the Seahawks won; I'm a Packers fan!)
Six days later, a night unfolded in a similar manner, but the phone call was drastically different.
"Hey, so you saw the Facebook status. I was out last night in the city and ended up getting robbed. I'm OK physically, but they grabbed my phone and wallet. I'll try and figure out what to do. Call me back. Love, Salim."
They called back, and I bawled like an Oilers fan. I said I was coming home, that I was finished with this experience, and that it was a real shitty situation.
Despite everything that happened that fateful night exactly a year ago, I'm not regretful of the situation. I look at it as a cost of doing business of my personality. I'm outgoing, will almost always say yes to a night out, and sometimes smoke and drink things from strangers without giving it a second thought.
I hate my life being predictable, and those traits tend to make certain that life will have some surprises.
The biggest thing I wish hadn't happened were all the pictures on my phone that I'll never have. My dad had visited me over the Christmas holidays; we stayed in Paris for a few days before taking the ferry to London to visit family. I certainly miss those pictures of us strolling the European rues We have only one picture left to commemorate the visit. Following the robbery, I had to wait a full 10 days before seeing my friends again (I had no phone, making it hard to meet up given we all lived in suburbs around the city).
Of course when we did finally meet up (on February 5, my dad's birthday), it was at our favourite pub, The Great Canadian. It was a pretty great Thursday night. We met at Chatalet, right by the Starbucks in front of the Pompidou, then crossed the bridge to our favourite pub. That narrative took place many a European night.
An normal night but a great night. Not seeing those guys for 10 straight days was harder than actually getting robbed.
Three weeks later, I ventured to Roma and Barcelone, where I had perhaps the craziest three nights of my life. The robbery didn't dampen my personality or bottle me up in any way; it only made me a bit wiser about my surroundings.
Reflecting on it all a year later is neat. I thought about it quite a bit this weekend…the seven word sentence that started it all, the moment I realized I'd been robbed, being denied from entering a cafe, and the sheer despair that morning.
In an odd way, I think it's a privilege to have gotten robbed. I was an Edmontonian who was living in Paris for a year when he was frisked following a crazy night that began with new friends.
How many people get to write that sentence in their story?
While living in Paris, I had a semi-romantic thought of coming to Montreal to live again. That thought stuck with me and, through an awful lot of hard work, came to fruition.
Now that I'm here, I have that same thought to go back to Paris.
It's cute to think about…returning wiser and matured, a café crême in one hand, a cigarette in the other, a Leffe to my left, a good friend to my right, and a beret on my head. Maybe take the transilien train from Gare St Lazare to Conflans Sainte Honorine and give another English class. Grab a croissant from the Creamhouse, take a stroll along the Seine.
Ça marche, mes étudiants?
Maybe I'll get robbed again when I return in Paris. It'd suck, sure, but it'd also be pretty great.
The total value of my goods stolen was probably around $450. That would the the world's greatest bargain if it meant another crazy Parisien story.
