Paris is an amazing city and I want to go back. The point I was trying to make is that wandering through the city of Voltaire and Sartre and all the rest, seeing the art and the cafes and the markets, and on and on, leads one to quickly embrace the notion of a romantic life in another world.

But that life isn’t real, or at least, it can’t be for most of us. Only the French can be French, and dreams of being Hemingway are unrealistic (and considering how that all turned out, maybe not that good of an idea anyway). Baguettes and lattes and dinner at 10 with vermouth are great for a week, but it can only be real for a short period of time.

Paris is a dream, and a good one, but it’s not real. More accurately, the real Paris is not the dream. On the way to the Sacre Coeur the visitor is confronted for the first time with the realization that there are Arabs in Paris — quite a few of them. They’re not part of the dream, but they have to keep them somewhere.