Isis -The Great Lady of Paris

La Grande dame de Paris (The Great lady of Paris) by me :)

So many things can be said about Paris. But where in the world do you meet a Bangladeshi street vendor who smiles at you when you pass by and tells you ''I love you" while he roasts his corns...?
Where do you meet a magazine seller who greets you every morning when you pass him by?
Where do you meet a hat seller with the name Fares (the stallion in Arabic), who takes the time to tell you about his Algerian origins, the things he is passionate about, and who insists on you taking the best hat he has and gives you an offer you can not resist, half of the price off, just because he likes you?
Where do you meet Salim, the waiter at Aux Foulies in Belleville, who gives you a free extra croissant or a free extra capochino every time you order a breakfast? And then accompanies your breakfast with tales about Kabyle, his Algerian place of origin, while giving you his mobile phone to watch his favourite berber songs?
Where do you meet an African refugee who witnessed horrors you can not imagine, done by people from another race, but still chooses love and a belief in the oneness of humankind?

My Aux Folies breakfast

Paris is the city of Amélie, the city of unexpected magic. And the magic was on the street, with 'normal' people, who were in actuality extraordinary.

I can tell you about the most scary moment I had in Paris and even then love was literally around the corner. I stayed in the metro and forgot to get out at the last stop. Eventually I arrived in the scary situation of sitting all alone in a metro, surrounded by hundreds of empty metro's, as far as my eyes could reach. I panicked. My phone didn't work inside the metro. I started hyperventilating. And then that moment when I rushed to the door and knocked and pushed it open and as it opened I get out and yell: "Help" and a smiley guy takes a peek from a corner and winks me to come to him. It was the metro driver. I was saved. He invited me into the drivers cabin with him and we set out on a tour through the Paris underground metro! It was too cool to see the metro from the drivers' seat! It felt like a childhood dream coming to life. The dark metro tunnel lightened up slowly every time we reached a stop. I could stay with him as long as I wanted, even the whole day, and I did!

Paris is also the city where a Gipsy lady enters the metro every day on the same location and the same time and starts singing 'Histoire d'un Amour': the 'history of a love that is the only song in the world that never ended'.

I am a fan of street artists & one day I saw one who had put his jukebox on the floor and started singing. He had a bowler hat and a bow tie. I gave him some change and decided to sit next to him. At one moment he gave me the microphone. I started singing. First hesitant, then we became a duo. I never felt how powerful and liberating singing for a public could feel until that day. Our last song was a Michael Jackson duet. I chose a lady from the metro audience, knelt on my knees and started singing: 'I just can't stop loving you', while the audience applauded. The song still echo's in my mind when I go back to that moment.

We exchanged numbers, me & musician. He was an artist and a singer song-writer and we made the deal that we would work together in the future. I would sing for the orphaned girls of Sierra Leone and he would sing for 'les poulets grillée' (grilled chicken :) )

Isis is the Great Lady of Paris
Paris is also the city of the Egyptian philosopher Osama Khalil, the owner of L'harmattan gallery in Paris. Osama's gallery seemed to be an ode to Isis. Everywhere were poems dedicated to the goddess.  "I am not gay, for me a God cannot be a male. I can only kneel to a Goddess", he said.
According to him Paris was originally named after Isis, the Egyptian Goddess of love. Paris has it's roots in Par-Isis, which meant 'the Grove of Isis'.
According to some scientists, the Notre Dame stands on the exact location where the city's temple of Isis was located. And  later on became the place where the kings and emperors of Europe were crowned.
Another clue can be found in Napoleon's coat of arms for the city of Paris. It shows Isis enthroned on the prow of a ship. In fact it was Napoleon who had commissioned a study that had found that Paris was originally named after the Goddess Isis.

Isis seated on her throne, the emblem of Paris

Isis represents magic, the power of love and protection. Isis's determination to find her lover Osiris's body, and later his parts, show us how important it is to fight for what we love. And it was in Paris that I continuously met people who on a daily basis fought for this love. And for a little while I was one of them when I fought for the orphaned girls of Sierra Leone. In my eyes if there was anyone deserving of love from this ancient city of love, it was for our orphanage children who have nobody else to call out to then to the Goddess of compassion and love.

On the road to the Grand Mosque to Paris