Genève: The View From Inside a Golden Cage
A story of loss, privilege and drug addiction. Based on a true sequence of events.
There is a haunted kind of beauty in his face as he looks at me, the silence between us stretching far into the bounds of awkwardness. For a moment we stand on the streets of Geneva staring at each other — unsure, uncertain, undecided. I finally smile at him, assure him I haven’t at all been disturbed by his crooning, that there was no need for him to apologise for singing on a busy street. His smile when it comes is a ray of sunshine on his scarred face. He shyly brushes a lock of long hair that has crept up onto his visage.
“It’s Lebanese. The song — it’s Lebanese. My mother is Lebanese, my father is Swiss.”
The smile is gone so fast it’s almost as if it had never been and the whisper when it comes is so soft I barely hear it over the busy din of the street.
“And I am a drug addict.”
If Paris screams of a City sure of its Elegance then Geneva broods quietly as a City that is sure of its Wealth. Everywhere you care to look luxury cars purr down the smooth, flag adorned roads. Store fronts with no visible security guards have watches worth half a million euros nestled behind the thick glass as the rich Genevois pass by with barely a glance. Giant logos of luxury brands sit atop the imposing buildings. These are the type of brands you only see advertising themselves in the first class lounges of airports or sponsoring the Olympic Games. Never on anything so vulgar as social media. The air itself seems cleaner than Paris, perhaps washed by the jets of the Jet d’Eau as it pumps its frothy brilliance into a sapphire sky stretching over a crystal clear lake bordering a city full of the rich and the beautiful.
It’s been three years since I moved to Grand Genève from Paris and I take walks sometimes in summer to soak it all in and forget the difficulty I have faced trying to make a place for myself in this most French of Swiss cities. I admire the countless flags of the Canton and the Republic of Geneva adamantly flying next to those of the Swiss Federation, a reminder that this is a State within a State, a wealthy enclave in a country that has persistently refused to acknowledge anything but its wealth and its neutrality in the heart of a continent that wreaked not one but two global wars. I had not been surprised that even though the UN was once headquartered here, Switzerland had not bothered to join until 2002. Then as now, Geneva silently looked, wrapped her skirts about her and carried on with the sometimes dirty business of enriching herself.
It’s rare to see homeless people in the streets of this city. It is even rarer for me to be launched into a full on conversation with them but here he is, smiling at me and for a moment I am nonplussed. I don’t know what stops me from walking away but I smile at him and ask him his name. I ask him to repeat it slowly so I don’t trip over the syllables. Now we are walking side by side and as easily as if we are old friends who have bumped into each other and and catching up on how life has been. I mostly listen, nodding in affirmation, sometimes asking a question or two when something seems to demand a deeper explanation as most of it does. He tells me stories of loss, of pain, of hurt. He tells me about his parents, his childhood, how he had started taking drugs. I hear the disappointment of his mother in his voice, and I see the indifference of his father in his eyes. He tells me of his fortunes and misfortunes. Just the previous day, some sex workers he had been living with had taken all his money and left him truly homeless again, sleeping on the streets that he has spent the past few days begging on.
The same streets through which I have walked so many times feeling so small and insignificant in a city where everyone seems so rich. Where in Paris I could comfortably afford a full meal and desert, here in Geneva, the people I have met mostly swipe away my offer to pay for anything because they understand that my French salary is peanuts compared to their Swiss ones.
He curses himself, the only reason he had gone to live with them is because they had offered him heroin. He turns to me, suddenly embarrassed that he had confessed that particular nugget. I tell him there is nothing to be embarrassed about. He looks doubtful and asks for my name. I tell him. I tell him of the sands of Algeria and how my blackness had made so many uncomfortable. I tell him of Zimbabwe and how I had fled the flaming collapse of what once the richest country in Africa. I tell him how I have ended up in this metropolis of money and diplomacy. A young intern come to search for a job that will take me forwards to the dreams of riches and success I had harboured for ages. Speaking it out loud makes me embarrassed. He has no home and here I am complaining about living outside one of the most expensive cities in the world. I hurriedly suggest we go and get lunch if he’s hungry. He agrees, he is famished.
As we wait in line to order our French tacos one of the staff comes to me and whispers, we cannot allow him in here monsieur. Look at the state of him. I am furious, furious on his behalf, furious and embarrassed. Our voices rise as I try to protest that he’s just dishevelled and not dirty but it’s a lost battle, the staff will not budge. I finally agree to make it a takeaway and we leave. We end up on a park bench near the Brunswick monument. My apology for the scene in the restaurant is met with a shrug and thanks as he digs hungrily into his food.
We talk for hours, the remains of our lunch around us, the sun slowly tracing its path to night, I am so adrift in the ocean of his words I have lost track of time. At one point he breaks down and starts crying. I hold his hand silently, I know I cannot say anything that will make the pain go away or not sound trite. As the golden rays give way to lengthening shadows, I realise I have to get home, realise that this, whatever it is, has to come to an end. He looks at me as I tell him my goodbyes and thanks me profusely. I tell him it had been my pleasure to buy him lunch and he shakes his head. No! I wasn’t thanking you for the lunch. I was thanking you for listening to me. I can only nod, I know if I dare speak I will start crying. He walks away into the gathering darkness.
My heart is broken into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Life is unfair. When your parent dies, no one cares but you and yours. But let the grandmother of the mayor’s wife die and it will be all over the news with outpourings of grief. Life’s not fair, and it never promised to be.”
— Mrs Ruswa, English Literature Teacher, St Columba’s High, Zimbabwe
“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”
— Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
