True Stories About Why I Became a French Historian
This is the true story.
It’s spring 2003. We’re halfway through the semester and I’m in my favorite class. I’m probably sitting at the front of the room because that’s the kind of thing I would do.
over the last four months, I’ve dedicated an inordinate amount of time to studying a country that I have no connection to and really have no business learning about. It’s my professor who’s the real attraction. she lectures at us three times a week, a big no-no in terms of what counts as good teaching these days. but I eat it up.
there’s no mystery here. she’s a good storyteller with a sense of humor. she makes the past fun. that’s a low bar, but not one that most professors manage to clear in those days.
I prepare for class as you might a trip to the movies. I even bring snacks. taking notes is just a way to record these stories, to save them for later, when I’ll read them over again, and chuckle to myself about the way she imitated MacMahon or de Gaulle (she was a good actress. impeccable timing.) she tells me later that she calls me “eyes” because she can gage how well her lectures are going based on how wide open my eyes are at any given moment.
but it’s more than that. she makes me feel special and I mean really special. sometimes it feels like it’s just the two of us in the room. (I mean, it’s a French history class at an enormous public school in northern California. my estimate is probably not too far off.)
one day she singled me out in the best possible way. we had written a paper on something or another, and she posted herself in the doorway so that as we filed by we could hand her the paper directly. she said it helped her put names to faces (again, an uncommon goal for a professor at a large public uni). as I walked by and gave her my paper, she looked down, saw my name, and remarked, “So you’re Nimisha Barton! I’ve heard wonderful things about you.” Presumably it was my graduate instructor who had put in a good word for me. There can be no greater compliment for a lifelong teacher’s pet who yearns to be seen. and from that moment, I was hooked.
When people ask me why I chose to study French history, this is the version of the truth I tell and I think this is the story I will continue to tell. It’s a lovely pre-packaged little thing that leaves us all feeling inspired. And it hits all the right notes considering my interests as an equity practitioner and an educator. I emphasize how she created a “welcoming learning environment” that fostered “a sense of belonging” for “a diverse undergraduate population.” This is the true story that you need to hear right now.
This is the truer story.
It’s the end of the semester. she’s teased empire throughout the last few months, which came as a surprise. in my family, I’d heard plenty about “the Britishers” and their nasty little ways. But I had no idea that the French had their imperial vices, too.
we’re coming up on present day France. she’s telling us about immigrants in a country that I’d always imagined as lily white. in fact, there are brutal wars of decolonization. There is racial conflict. There is religious strife. There is right-wing nationalism.
I perk up. to me, france was just a fantasy. it was proud kings and queens, decaying castles and rustic villages. France was the Eiffel Tower, berets and baguettes, somewhere near that London bridge that childhood ditties tell us keeps falling down, falling down. it was a far away, make believe place. that’s why I liked studying France. it wasn’t real, it was fairy tales.
if it hadn’t been for what came next, this is as far as it would have gone. another thought-provoking Tuesday afternoon that left me dreamy for a little while before life resumed and I’d have to go back to the business of being a college student.
then the lecture took a sharp turn. this is what my mind has chosen to remember:
her voice gets low.
recently a young woman decided not to wear the hijab (an act of rebellion?)
Without a hijab, the neighborhood boys say she is flaunting her body.
she is making it known that she’s sexually available.
they taunt her
they follow her
one day they decide to punish her.
they hunt her.
they surround her.
They set her on fire.
she dies at the hands of the boys she grew up with
before then, weren’t they, childhood playmates, classmates, even friends?
weren’t they brothers whom she’d grown to trust?
her death is immediately politicized.
to the French, it is yet another example of the brutality of an infidel people.
to her community, it is an unfair characterization used to demonize them.
and along the way, she is getting lost.
arguments unfold atop her ashes.
because her body has become a battlefront.
when class ends, my face is wet. my peers get up and leave. I can’t because I can’t move. I’ve been sucked into the undertow of something I can’t explain. it’s hard to breathe.
as though possessed, I follow my professor to her office. there’s something urgent in me that demands to be heard. I sit down across from her. I tell her that this young woman, she could have been me, she could have been my best friend, no in fact she is me, no she is my best friend, no she is every single one of us, we brown-skinned girls that they’re always so willing to sacrifice.
there is a pause. I am looking to her for something. I am looking to be soothed. I am begging to be mothered.
there is a blank look on her face. time stops for one two three beats. eventually her natural instincts kicks in. she is comforting in the way I need. and she is kind enough not to point out that what I’m saying doesn’t actually make any sense. I’m not North African, I’m not Muslim, I don’t veil and neither does anyone I know. I am a brown girl from southern California who takes French history classes for fun. there is no parallel here to be drawn. and yet she must have seen that for some reason unbeknownst to her I was compelled to share in the suffering of this girl. a girl I will think about for the rest of my life.
that’s the day I decide to be a French historian. these are my research questions:
how could they let something like that happen to her?
she, an obedient daughter of France, if a disobedient daughter of her community
shouldn’t that have been enough to earn her double protection?
wasn’t it their duty to look after her, to shield her from violence?
as those boys surrounded her that afternoon, did she think someone would save her?
at what point did she realize that she could cry out but no one was listening?
that it was up to her to save herself?
when did she realize that these boys weren’t who they used to be?
that these boys were becoming men in the only way they knew how, by hurting her, by hurting us.
in those final moments, did she wonder how this could possibly happen, why her?
or was she brave.
did she think why not me as the flames consumed her.
I find a way to make these questions scholarly, that is, distant. to separate myself from my own primal knowledge. like the good student I’ve always been, I will pursue a research project. yes, it will hit close to home, but it exists in another time and another place, it is distant enough that it can’t hurt me. in this way, French history becomes a way I learn to blunt the pain.
of course, I’ll never admit to any of this. can you even imagine. I’d never be taken seriously again. if I’m lucky, they’ll say I lack “objectivity.” more likely, they’ll whisper among themselves that I’m an emotional wreck driven by feminine trauma not scholarly detachment. I’m unfit for this discipline. I need to be more disciplined. and just like that, I’ll surrender what little I’ve managed to acquire over the years: credibility, legitimacy, which is just another way of saying I’ve proved to you that you can, should, must believe me. if I tell you the truer story, though, you’ll stop listening and I’ll be right back where I started before you even knew me.