No Home but Still Hope

April 7 2011
It was an important decision. take the morning train to Calais in northern France, take the ferry across the French Channel, and sleep in Dover or spend the whole day going between Mcdonalds and Gare de Nore, drinking, eating, and digging everything that the block had to offer until 4:30 am when the train station opened again. But without hesitation I chose the latter. Something about people watching sounded real. And thats exactly what my Odyssey had to be. The station doors lock at 1:30 when the last decrepit train slides into its predetermined slot, leaving me with 3 hours on the grimy streets of Paris at night. You see the most interesting homeless in Paris, a combination of Ruskis, Italians, and Africans. But for some reason unknown I wanted to be the american. The one who wasn't forced to the street but needed it just the same. I thought "God damnit, if I want to see Europe, I gotta see the dark dirt covered underside. The side of the beast that the owners don't even want to clean up. The dark side, the unknown side, of the gorgeous moon." So after a couple trips to Mc'D's to access the wireless and read about the colossal fuckup of a job my government was doing deciding our budget cuts, I had a couple pints and asked the waitress if I could access the bathroom to change. The weather was already getting cold and I wanted to be dressed in full so I didn't have to expose what I had in my back while in the presence of thieves, alcoholics, and nutters. The only thing I would leave accessible was my jiwe, a dual purpose club and knife from Tanzania. I took my bathroom token and walked up the spiral steps and washed myself in the sink. I felt like I was preparing for one my high school debates rather than sleeping on the streets. With my old USSR hat fastened securely on my head I took a deep breath and walked outside the station and into the vast ocean of crooks, prostitutes, and homeless. I sat down on my bag and opened my my book. Almost immediately I befriended a scrawny Somalian fresh off the boat. His teeth black, his english broken, and his wallet empty. But regardless of his state on the fiscal hierarchy, he had the street know-how that only mobsters could rival. He new who to avoid, how to talk to outsiders trying to make conversation, and when the bread truck arrived. I sat and read under the dim street lamp. My paper was a peachy skin color and when the lights of a taxi shone on my book it reminded me of what color the pages should have been. Regardless, I kept reading and people watching. The Somalian, convinced I was Russian on accords of my hat, pointed at a relatively well-dress figure ambling down the road towards us. "Russian, you Russian, he Russian. Ehhh!" He approached us curiously, seeking the source of commotion directed towards his presence. Edgars wasn't from Russia. He hailed from Latvia but didn't have a home. His trip to find his family in London went terribly wrong when he was stabbed in Germany and had to undergo operation. With no money and only one arm for defense, he was easy going and tried hard to make friends for the night ahead. We split a beer and rested while the Somalian ran off and got us soup and coffee from the homeless shelter van. His english was decent enough to explain how he stole his turquoise sweater and black jeans. But other than that we sat in silence, he later told me that he thought about how to get to Calais, which was a coincidence because that was my plan, while I thought about the open road ahead. The hundred pint to be poured, the dozens of trains to be boarded, and that last stair, the final plane ticket home. The Somalian returned with broccoli soup and stale coffee that tasted as if it was strained through the filters of cigarettes. But it was energy and I needed it if I wasn't going to get robbed. I couldn't let myself get robbed, it would only prove that I took something on that I couldn't handle. A pet I wasn't responsible enough to care for. I looked up from my coffee. Yusin was bowing under the street light inches from a piss stream and praying. Singing in the dead of night to Allah under that yellow, dirty, ancient thing. I went back inside the station. The doors wouldn't close for another 30 minutes leaving me time to rest my eyes and have a cat nap before the 3 hour stretch on the streets awkake. Leaning back I looked up at the glass ceiling of the terminal at the sky. I couldn't forget Yusin and his devotion, I mean that scrawny joker kissed the grotesque sidewalk in the name of his lord. What was up there? Just as I started getting into the thoughts that I often have while alone, and just as I was staring at that glass, the lights turned on and the transluncences of the ceiling decreased because the reflection of the night passengers getting off the train and leaving the terminal. For a second I thought that maybe it meant there was nothing beyond humans but then I realized it also could have meant that heaven is full of humans all going home after the long and sometimes uncomfortable trip of life.


-Chad A. Dokken