It is said to truly know a person, travel with them, so after years of being married my wife and I travelled to Paris for a holiday.
The French capital is a lovely city and is known as the Honeymoon Capital, and it is here that newlyweds come from across the globe to walk on the embankment of the River Seine, holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes, watching the Eiffel Tower light up in the night as they hear French, the language of love, being spoken.
American singer Frank Sinatra made the city even more famous with his sizzling number, I love Paris, from the Hollywood movie, Paris when it Sizzles, and Bollywood star Shammi Kapoor made the city of lovers known to the millions in the subcontinent, starring in the movie An Evening in Paris and making Parisienne ladies dance to his tune.
Paris is definitely not meant for a squabbling couple. “We should hold hands while we are strolling in this city,” I told my wife. “See, how everyone’s walking side by side, and none of the men are walking ahead of their partners.”
None of us in our family care much about touching. Our younger son abhors being hugged by his mother and is embarrassed when we talk to him in public. “I don’t want to hold your hand, you know how sweaty and clammy your palm gets,” said my wife.
“Yes, I should have dealt with my perspiration problem while in Dubai and should have got the Botox injection in my palm as the doctor suggested,” I said.
“Look, look,” I said, nudging my wife excitedly as our tour bus took us near the Eiffel Tower.
“It’s an ugly looking tower,” said my wife. “Only an engineer will appreciate it.” Right in front of us was the famous Tower and seeing it from her perspective it looked like a dirty blackish-grey structure.
Fascinating exhibits
We of course, could not miss seeing the Louvre, the world’s largest art museum and monument. The exhibits are out of this world. Each of the three interconnecting wings of the museum has five levels, and each floor tells a fascinating story and houses a fabulous Islamic art collection, colossal statues of the Greek gods, and tells the horrific end of Queen Marie Antoinette, who supposedly said starving people could eat cake.
While everything from the past in this historic city is massive, it seems that Parisians struggle for space in the present.
In our tiny hotel room, my wife and I had to say, excuse me, as we got in each other’s way. “Why couldn’t you book an Airbnb? I asked my wife. “Why don’t you sit down and don’t move. Let me get ready and then I will sit down on my bed and you get ready,” said my wife.
The bathroom was even tighter for space, I had to enter it sideways and also sit on the toilet bowl at an angle. Getting into the bathtub required knowledge of Chinese internal martial art of Tai Chi. One had to slowly lift up one leg high and place it in the bathtub, then think about your situation as to how you would get your whole body in, when the wife shouts from outside, “Be careful, the tub will be slippery, I used coconut oil shampoo.”
Travel sure helps bring people together. My wife and I came closer as we could not afford to get lost as the only French word my wife knew was ‘mercy’ and it sounded like a victim in one of Stephen King’s horror stories.
“It’s not pronounced ‘mercy’,” I pointed out to my wife again and again, for the French word for ‘thank you’— Merci!
We finally left Paris not holding hands but dragging each other’s baggage.
Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi.
