A TRAITOR TO ONE'S SPECIES, or SDFs I have known

Nice, France. The sneaking suspicion I'd had since yesterday was confirmed by this morning's news which announced that another SDF ('Sans Domicile Fix', or homeless person) had been 'found dead', this time in Nice, near the 'Voie Rapide' (the overpass expressway leading from one end of town to the other).

I knew immediately who they were talking about. That was why he and his bed (quilts and blankets thrown over a bare slope of ground, protected beneath an on-ramp I pass by several times a day) hadn't been there this morning, the last day of 2008. Of course, it was good not to have to be confronted anymore with such flagrant human misery, while ordinary people bustled around him, indifferent, preparing their Christmas and New Year's celebrations....

My first reaction to the news, after the small shock of having my fear confirmed, was indignance. What did they mean 'found'? He hadn't been lost, after all, nor had he been invisible! He had been in that bed, on the ground, head propped up on an elbow, watching the traffic pass, whatever the hour, day or night, for five weeks at least. The ground surrounding his bed had become increasingly cluttered with bags and bottles (yes, I forgot to mention the bottle of some cheap rotgut that was always at hand) and other debris... It was what, in my family, would have been called 'an eyesore', or 'a pigsty'.

As an American, I find such spectacles amazing. It never would have happened in the States... At least, not in the California I grew up in... First off, there are (or were) loitering laws that the US police delighted in enforcing. Why not in France? And over and above that, where were the associations that were supposed to take such cases in hand?

The news report added that this dead SDF had been a Polish immigrant, 48 years old, and that he had not died of the cold. An investigation, the report concluded, had been opened. But why couldn't an investigation have been opened BEFORE he was dead?

I've been living too many years in France, with too few visits home, to know how things are with American homeless people... But I guess hundreds, if not thousands, of fine and not-so-fine citizens must have whizzed by this Polish immigrant's makeshift bed in the five weeks or so that he occupied that space...

I had first noticed him while he was still in the center of town, near where I have my business. He had elected to panhandle the cars stopped at the red light just at the intersection in front of the apartment building where Sweetie had taken refuge (Sweetie's rescue, from being one of Nice's stray dogs, has been recounted elsewhere among these articles). The SDF usually sat hunched over, his elbows on his knees, on a bench on the sidewalk, waiting for the light to turn red, whereupon he would pull himself up and lumber over to the waiting cars, hand held out. His open bottle was usually sitting on the ground, next to the bench.

He always glared at me as I went by, usually walking my dogs. That was last summer. For a while, in August (maybe it was), he had been sleeping on one of the park benches, where the clutter had also accumulated, and where he was seen to 'hang out' his wash, his bluejeans and teeshirts strung up on the iron spikes of the high fencing that the 'Mairie' (City Hall) had built to keep the SDFs out at night (they were getting back in anyway). He was a handsome man, very tall, with dark, piercing, anxious eyes over a full dark beard and mustache... Why couldn't he have done better than to sleep on park benches?

He must have finally been driven out of the center of town, for making a bad impression on tourists, because about then, end of August, he turned up sitting day and night on a cement bench on the sidewalk under the same 'Voie Rapide' ramp where, finally, he died. This bench is almost exclusively used by SDFs, who appreciate the protection the overhead on-ramp affords from rain... I never spoke to him (although I do sometimes speak to SDFs, especially if they have dogs), until, one day last autumn, he had a go at me as I was passing by, walking my dogs. I couldn't understand what he was shouting, but his gestures and his tone were obvious. He was reproaching me about my dogs. Jealous, I decided. But he was so big, and his tone was so threatening, that I shouted back. That's the Latin way. The louder and the noiser you are, the better chance you have of winning an argument. Logical reasoning doesn't count on the street here. Outshouting your opponent does. Besides, I figured that if I put him in his place, he wouldn't bother me again. Still, I tended to change sidewalks when, on foot, I saw him sitting on that bench. But he never talked to me again. He just glared when I went past.

And now, he's dead.

Such a waste!

A big handsome man like that, wasn't there somewhere someone who had loved him? Why did he have to come from Poland to France, to die so ignobly? I didn't know, nor want to know, his story, but surely there had been another possible way in his life? Why hadn't he taken it? Why had he accepted to live like that, doing nothing all day long but panhandling, drinking rotgut, and watching life go by on the dinky streets of Nice, France...

And now it's too late... Dead, even while surrounded by the hustle and bustle of hundreds, maybe thousands of people... all of them apathetic about his plight...

I've often been accused of being a traitor to my species... Of course, those who make such accusations are probably looking to asuage their guilt, because they do nothing whether for animals or for people... But still, one explains to them that people can fend for themselves, more or less well, in this complex society that has evolved, with all of us trapped inside. Animals can't fend like we can, or could if we wanted to... That's why they are worthy of our defense. Besides, I also have some experience with 'saving people'. It doesn't work. With animals, you can impose a rescue, but with humans they have to want to be rescued, otherwise it just doesn't take, however hard the rescuer works at it.

Many disappointing experiences in this regard convinced me that the one you want to rescue has to WANT to be rescued. And if they want to be rescued, they will ask you for help (but of course a request for help is no proof of sincerity either, and can be just another pitfall to beware of). All in all, rescuing animals is more often successful, and thus more satisfying. Still, all those lost souls haunt me, the ones I couldn't, or didn't help. Just like their animal counterparts, whom I can't help (the dogs running loose on highways, the skinny, forelorn dogs of SDFs, who probably get a beating when their masters are drunk, the cats that scurry under cars along busy streets...).

And then, there is the Japanese SDF who has lived on the same street bench in the center of town, not far from where the Polish SDF used to panhandle, for two years now. He has a big, neat packpack and sleeps in the doorway of the nearby municipal library. He doesn't panhandle, and is very discreet, although, in my opinion, totally crazy. You would think he was a tourist waiting for his fellow travelers to catch up with him. He just sits and smokes and talks to himself, and no one else, day after day. He doesn't seem to drink. But how can people so voluntarily narrow down the limits of their precious lives, when there is a whole planet available to be lived in?

This last summer, there was an SDF sleeping on a small square of grass near the shopping center behind my business. He was small and slight and dark, an Arab. You never see Arab SDFs. He seemed lost. I tried to talk to him, but he signalled that he didn't want to talk, at least, not to me, a woman. And he said something, in Arab, so I deduced that he didn't speak French. His backpack was propped against a tree on this grass, where all the dogs in the neighborhood are brought to do their business. And not everyone cleans the mess up afterward. But even if they did, who would want to sleep there? But this SDF had a blanket and that is what he did, every night. He was young, and he looked so lost, I asked a nice Arab man in my neighborhood to go talk to him, because I thought he needed help. That was after talking to the people from an association that comes around at night with a hot drink and chat for the SDFs that live in the center of town. They said they would go have a look at him, but as nothing happened, I finally spoke to the Arab neighbor. He is a kindly fellow, and of course for another Arab he was concerned, so he went. A couple of days later, this young Arab was gone. I asked what had happened. He had come here, no papers, from Tunisia, and then got scared. His money had been stolen and he didn't know what to do. As there is a very big and important Arab community here in Nice, with a market and a prayer room not far from where this young fellow was, lost and alone, it was an easy thing to point him in the right direction. The Arab community took up a collection and bought him a bus ticket back to Tunisia. The boy was very grateful, I was told, having been too timid to ask for help, not knowing where to turn, and completely paralyzed by his situation...

And just think! Every quarter of Nice has its SDFs, with their problems, and often with their dogs, and sometimes even cats....

I sat next to an old lady once, in a café on the Mont Boron, one of the hills overlooking Nice. She was there with her full-up caddy and her two cats, perfectly tame and well-behaved, held by string tied to their collars. She asked the barman for a coffee. He refused to serve her! I was with two other people at the next table and we were talking business, so I didn't have much of a head to follow what was going on with her. What did attract what attention I gave was her so-well-behaved cats. The old lady grumbled and continued to ask for a coffee. The barman continued to refuse and even ordered her to get out of the café! The old lady was clean and properly, if modestly, dressed. Why was the barman treating her so rudely? And she had put the money for her coffee on the table, so what was eating him?

The man in our party quietly ordered a coffee and when it came, he passed it to the lady. She thanked him and drank, her cats curled up quietly on the table beside her. The barman, seeing what our friend had done, judiciously shut up.

After the man in our party left, the other lady and I sat and chatted with the old woman a few minutes. She was gentle and refined. My friend asked her if she lived nearby. The old lady hemmed and hawed and finally admitted that she had no home anymore. She had been put out, for lack of resources. We were appalled. After we left, driving down the hill back into the center of town, we talked it over and decided that we couldn't leave this old lady like that. We had no ideas what to do for her, but still we turned around and drove back to the bar. But she was already gone, and we couldn't find her on the street. The memory of this old lady still haunts me!

The ones you can help, the ones you can't... Justice ultimately has to be divine, if there is to be Justice, because you won't find it, except exceptionally, on this earth.

Was it Albert Schweitzer who said, Think a moment, sometimes, of the suffering of which you usually spare yourself the sight...

So many questions, so few answers, as we muddle our way through the experience of life.