MAY 21, 2019 – Prejudice—I’m as guilty of it as is the next person. One of my best examples occurred aboard an overnight train from Lyon to Paris. The train had originated in Rome and pulled into Lyon well past midnight.
My reservation was for a second-class compartment already occupied by three other men about my age at the time—mid-twenties. In the dim light, they looked travel worn and a bit disheveled, one of them particularly so. I greeted them with a low-level “Hey,” and squeezed my backpack onto the rack above one of the two sets of opposing bench seats. I then sat down in the remaining corner.
“You a Yankee?” the guy opposite me asked in English with a British accent. His tone was friendly, so I responded in kind, confirming his guess.
The guy sitting in the opposite corner on the same side as the Brit was French but fluent in English. I soon noticed that the two had become acquainted en route before Lyon and were on good speaking terms.
The third guy, occupying the other corner on my side, was the odd-man out. When I asked him if he spoke English, he grunted apparent affirmation. When I asked where he was from, he mumbled, “Turkey.” Doubtless annoyed by the station stop and the intrusion of an additional passenger, the Turk pressed his weary head back against the side headrest, closed his eyes and folded his arms.
Despite the late hour, the first two guys were now wide awake, and in low voices they engaged me in conversation. I don’t remember the details of the conversation, but the two men were smart, well-spoken and interesting.
Occasionally I glanced over at the Turk. Each time his slouch appeared lower; his disheveled clothes, grungier; his unruly hair, messier; his unshaven face darker and more sinister. I thought about the movie Midnight Express, which had come out the year before. In the film, an American student, Billy Hayes, is caught smuggling hashish out of Turkey and is imprisoned in a godforsaken prison. After suffering much cruelty, Hayes eventually escapes and flees to Greece and freedom. For many of us of Billy Hayes’ generation, the movie had created a very negative impression of Turkey—unfairly, critics claimed.
Eventually, the Brit, the French guy and I drifted off to sleep. Just before sunrise, the French traveler, then the Brit detrained, leaving the Turk and me to go the distance to Gare du Nord.
Just after sunrise, as the conductor came through the carriage to announce the approach of our final destination, the Turk came to life. Warily, I asked him what he was doing in Paris. Surely he was up to something nefarious—drugs, no doubt.
“I’m a student at the Paris Conservatory,” he said, in perfect command of English. “I want to be a symphony conductor, and this is the best place to study. It’s been a long journey for me. Now to get cleaned up and have a decent meal!”
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
