<i>Down and out in Paris and Rome</i>

Munir surely showed his grit, all over.
The quick burst of Noakhali accent drew my attention. He was standing there talking excitedly with a fellow Bangladeshi just outside a beautiful chapel in Paris. In front of him was laid a cloth on which miniature Eiffel Towers were on display. Silver, violet, bronze and black. Key rings with the towers tugged at the end also lay in pools.
Munir's skin had cracked in the cold. His eyes red from the wind that blew with a force on this mountain top at Pigalle, the place famous for Salvador Dali's museum. His clothes are dirty. They had not been washed in who knows how many days.
Just then a tourist couple strolled by and Munir stopped his exchange with the fellow tower-seller.
“Bonjour madam,” he greets with his arms waving towards his merchandise. “Cheap.”
Three towers for one euro. Five euros for a big one. That's cheap indeed.
The tourists ignored him with nonchalant gaze and walked away.
“I am doing it for the last one year. Day in and day out. Snow or no-snow. Cold or hot. I am stuck,” Munir said. It was spring now and yet bitterly cold. Black dirt had gathered in the cracks of his skin. Hot water must have been a rarity where he lived.
Munir is stuck. And so are the other Bangladeshis who had lined up on this hilltop with Eiffel Towers.
“I had paid the adam (the slang for a manpower agent) Tk 12 lakh to come to Italy,” Munir, who speaks quite good English and had a trading business in Dhaka, said. “I went there as an agriculture labourer.”
“I paid Tk 15 lakh,” another fortune seeker Khair chipped in.
Then they all found that there was no job in Italy, one of the economic laggards of the European Union. As things got worse, they just slipped over to France and sought political asylum. Thousands of them have crossed over not only to Paris but also to the UK. They managed all fake papers of persecution -- police cases and all. Somewhere in Noakhali, some police officers must have made a fortune in giving them the documents.
As an asylum-seeker, they get 325 euro each. In Paris that is really nothing where a decent meal can cost upwards of 15 euros.
“This is Dog's life,” Munir says. “We have rented two rooms for 20 of us. We have one toilet.”
This sleeping space costs Munir 200 euro a month. He gets a metro ticket at a subsidized rate. The rest goes for food and it is anyone's guess what food they get with that amount.
“Bonjour monsieur. La Italiano?” Munir suddenly stopped conversation and waved hands at a woman with a kid. “Cheap price. Come.”
Again the tourist walked away.
This thing was being repeated from morning. Still he had to get his first sale.
“Sometimes, I can make 30 or 40 euro a day. That is not bad. But the problem is elsewhere,” he said.
The problems are the police and the African asylum-seekers. Just as Bangladesh, footpaths are controlled by the musclemen and often the Africans who are greater in number have the sway over who can hawk and who not.
“Eiffel Tower is under their control,” said Khair. “It has more tourists and so a lucrative place for street hawkers. If we try our luck there, the Africans will chase us away.”
But here either is not very easy. Only this morning, the Bangladeshis had a fight with the Africans over control of footpath. Just then a tall giant black man strode in. He was talking over cellphone and scanning the hawkers. His eyes were on Munir and his company.
“Here comes the gang leader,” Munir murmured. The hawkers had all gone stiff. The tension was palpable.
“Just ignore him. Don't talk to him if he asks something,” one Bangladeshi advised another.
But the black man did not draw nearer. He walked by.
The reason was visible. A police patrol car rolled into the church yard.
“Mama aisey (The uncle has come),” the alarm was raised form one vendor at the far end. A flurry of activities began. The hawkers hastily gathered their Eiffel Towers, lifted the bags on shoulders and hurriedly melted in the crowd.
“Please tell our people in Bangladesh not to come here. It is hell for us,” Munir said before he disappeared.
Just then the chapel chime started ringing.