Your toilet paper, my Persian rice
When living under coronavirus duresse, what will you turn to?
PARIS - Except for the shuttered home repair shops and clothing stores that dot the capital and the supermarkets springing into action with various covid-related safety procedures, things haven’t seemed that different here, ever since President Macron instituted the confinement policy on March 17th, 2020. Life has gone on, as normally as it could, with the country’s battery level set at about 40%.
While the French have been encouraged by the President, in two separate televised addresses, to stay home, people still go out, but not in the same numbers as they did in the pre-confinement era.
Most days feel like a Sunday, around 11 a.m. Small groups of people—couples, a mother and her child, an elderly person lugging a shopping cart—have been seen wandering, to and fro. One wonders whether they are carrying the all-important “attestation,” the hall pass to the city streets? Probably. As non-conformist as the French are, they are sufficiently civically-minded for this social-experiment-under-the-watchful-eye-of-the-state to function.
One thing about the French (government): they can come up with new forms, and right quick. The “attestation” (examine one here) states,
“under the new March 19th, 2020 decree, I hereby certify that the reason I am outside is related to one of the following : to go to work, if working remotely is not possible and my work is considered essential to the nation’s well-functioning, to buy groceries, tend to an elderly relative, buy medecine and/or medical supplies, walk the dog or perform physical exercise.”
Sign and date, fold it and put it in your pocket—you’re good to go.
GOOD READS: “The unemployment rate is not the right measure to make economic policy decisions around the coronavirus-driven recession” (Elise Gould, Economic Policy Institute)
It’s not perfect, this form. It is based on the honor system. As a friend would comment to me, people can write anything and give any excuse for being out and about. But, and this is my personal viewpoint, most people tend to do the honorable thing and leave their home, for valid reasons. There are those people who believe that human beings will try and bend the rules and come up with a shenanigan, or two, abuse the system, but I don’t count myself as part of that group. The majority of people can be expected to behave honorably.
Whether imperfect, or illusory, this government’s proviso, picked up by a number of other liberal democracies, including the United States, seems to have worked. 17% of Paris’s inhabitants have decamped to the countryside, anyway, and the rest have been staying in, mostly, in compliance with the confinement order. The atmosphere in the French capital, if I were to guess-describe it, is one of serene restlessness mixed with boredom.
Most people, like me, I would assume, are likely wondering when this will all end, what further damage from the virus awaits, and what the day-after will look like. Is the current economic slump going to turn into a full-on recession, or, even, into a depression, as some have been warning? Or, are world economies going to bounce back quickly?
Supermarkets have been laboratories of human social experiment, under coronavirus duresse. Panes of plexiglass have been sprouting up, shielding cashiers from customers. Entrance to the local supermarket is now regulated, one out, one in—a harbinger of bread lines? And when you queue up to pay for your purchase, look for the mark on the floor. You’ll know where to stand, so you’re not too close to the person in front of you.
Echoing the paranoia about toilet paper witnessed early on in this here Corona Era, I’ve been experiencing paranoia, myself, of the ancestral kind. Your toilet paper, my Persian rice. Out of some unjustified, likely, belief that this stage is but “Corona Lite” and a full-on Armageddon is coming, complete with Corona walkers, North Korean invaders and Mexican rapists, coming for us, I have been feeling the need to stock up on rice. But not any kind. Persian, long-grain, basmati rice, the variety that is used in Persian cuisine.
So far, I have availed myself of three eleven-pound bags of basmati rice, purchased from a local Persian deli. It’s a strange need to fill. I was born in France of Persian parents, and visited Iran thrice in my life, only, all before 1979, when the Islamic Revolution turned the county into a broken shell of itself.
One could argue that I have more socio-cultural ties to France and America (with the latter, definitely). So why rice? Why not, peanut butter, or pasta?
I couldn’t say. There are practical reasons, presumably. Rice stays.
I am hoping that the coronavirus doesn’t.
(photo: Markus Spiske for Unsplash)
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