“Those screams aren’t drunk tourists,” the artist whispered in my ear. “Musketeers are battling the cardinal’s guards for the Queen’s necklace. And that off-key busker? That’s Quasimodo singing from the roof of Notre-Dame. You don’t see Paris with your eyes. Only with your heart. Saint-Exupéry wrote that. I’d say: after a bottle of wine.”
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I am sitting on a balcony in a country that is not my own. The sun is relentless, the pavement below warps slightly in the heat, but I can smell rain in the distance. It will arrive without warning. In the city I come from, I could always sense a storm before it broke. But here, things work differently. The rain arrives, mid-thought, mid-step, and…read more