Chechen Singles

Manif dans le Marais

A major thoroughfare runs between the Arc de Triomphe and Place de la Bastille, passing directly in front of the Presidential palace as it changes from the Champs d'Elysee to rue Rivoli.

On Friday, 18 March 2005, the road stretched across a great divide. On the Champs side, Russian President Vladamir Putin dined with French President Jacques Chirac.




In the streets of Le Marais, Chechen refugees marched to protest the assassination - just one week previously - of their own leader, Aslan Maskadov.

"Liberty. Equality. Fraternity." said one refugee. "I am not foolish enough to believe that I will find all of that here. But it is really something to see it displayed - everywhere, everywhere, everywhere - as an ideal. Here, at least I am free to wave my flag in the street."

Metro to Melun

I step onto a Paris metro with vague directions of how to find a banquet hall in a distant suburb. The occasion: a summer wedding.

After two years of contact, my Chechen friends are impressively fluent in French, but the divide between English and Russian accents still creates confusion. The doors close and I'm on my way to Melun, which is the opposite direction from Meudon. Both are 45-60 minutes from Gare du Nord.

Opting for a top-tier seat, my eyes provide immediate relief. About 60% of the passengers in this car are male, have jet-black hair, and chiseled cheekbones. The colour palette of their clothing

Not surprising, the other passengers look slightly ill at ease.

Central Paris was untouched by the riots and car torching that made international news in October 2005.

Melun is the suburb where cars still burn on a regular basis - usually about once per month.

I ask a guy across the aisle: "Vous venez de la tchechenie?" He is taken aback. Immediately, it strikes me that in another place and time, any stranger posing such a question might have spelled danger. Even here and now, i.e. France in June 2007, there is an undercurrent of suspicion toward immigrants from beyond EU borders.

The tension is diffused when another young man recognises me and nods his approval. Once again, I am astounded by the collective acceptance one experiences from this community. I hold up my camera, and after a brief discussion, they accept it as well.

A French man questions me about taking pictures in such a public space; the privacy laws in France are such that police are known to physically block - with a broad back or an outstretched palm - a shot that seems to target an unsuspecting individual. I reply that I have the subjects' approval. He gets up and moves to another car, as do two or three others.

An hour passes quickly in a game of cat and mouse. The big, black cat being my Canon EOS1 with telephoto lens, the mice being a colourful array of lens-equipped cell phones.