I thought to offer Ahmed a Gauloise, but where would he smoke it? He couldn’t go out behind the building – the curtains would be up in a few minutes – and he could not smoke on stage. Besides, I thought, I don’t smoke and I shouldn’t feed his habit with Mike’s cigarettes. “They aren’t going to like me. They’ll laugh,” he said, referring to the teenagers in the audience.

Performing under any circumstances is distressing, but the distress is magnified when mostly adolescents comprise the audience. The butterflies flutter faster, like staccato notes. Heavy, vexed breathing is next, and then nausea, lightheadedness, slurred speech, and perspiration, a sensation of a relaxed bladder and a desire to escape, fight, or perhaps flight? Five minutes before “places,” the soft rumbling beyond the curtain grew into a menacing polyphonous din.

“Cinq minutes.”

“Bienvenue! Merci d'être venus ce soir. Ce soir, concert ...’’

I looked out from behind the curtain and saw the theater director center stage, a white light focused on her as she welcomed the audience. I noticed how every one behind the curtain was pacing, maybe thinking about their lines, or chords, or the spicy white fish curry we had had for dinner, or maybe a Gauloise, or a Heineken, or maybe sex, yes sex, or politics, or maybe the juxtaposition of beautiful public spaces constructed with the spoils gained through colonialism and then marred by German aggression. But who knows what the guys were thinking? I can only relay my own thoughts at that moment.

I thought about my walk around the Luxembourg Gardens, a beautiful park in the Sixth Arrondissement of Paris. Along the way, I had stopped to read a few memorial plaques fastened to the façade of an École. So and so was killed here, August 1944. So and so was killed here, August 1944. So and so was killed here, August 1944, etc.…. I wanted to squeeze my finger into the holes left in the side of the building after the Mauser rounds tore through the flesh of the French resisters, forced to capitulate on these spots, whose names are too numerous to recall, but are now eternally inscribed in brass, mais je ne l’ai fait pas. I cannot explain the strange fascination with wanting to experience what happened in those exact places. A peculiar energy permeates the milieu around the plaques, especially when one realizes that the place where one is standing is probably the same place where a Wermacht soldier or an SS man stood before turning the names on the wall cold. I thought about what the resistance fighter, bound and blindfolded, thought right before his murderer pulled the trigger.

Applause and guffaws reached into the shadows behind the stage, and I looked around at the band. Vijay, a virtuoso on the piano, was pensive, quiet. Ahmed and Ahmad engaged in a conversation about Iraqi politics, no doubt. Sergio played through the songs in his head, paced about, shoeless as usual. Mike, my buddy, my brother, my fellow war buff and amateur historian, stretched, getting loose. When on tour, bands become like family, and, for that moment, these were the most important people in my world.

Mike cracked a smile.

I cracked a smile.

“Merci!, J'espère que vous apprécierez le concert.’’

I posed the obvious question to Mike.

“There are so many teenagers in the audience tonight because the American Embassy is trying to reach out to the people in the suburbs,” he replied. “The kids are here because this area is like Brooklyn. After having to commute to the center of Paris, and then back, their parents are too tired to come to things like this, so they send their kids instead.”

Indeed, the demographics of the population of Epinay Sur Seine seemed a lot like that of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I sat on the steps of the theater, much like I do on my stoop, and began to understand how global France has become: Sub-Saharan Africans, North Africans, Jews, and Caribbean natives all walked by or waited for the bus. No one noticed me. Around the corner, I enjoyed an espresso in a Vietnamese café, ate a dish of white fish curry for dinner from the Madagascan restaurant, and washed my spicy wings down with a ginger beer. As Mike spoke, I thought about how the people outside reminded me of my mother and my aunts who catch the bus to the subway to get into Manhattan, in order to clean the homes and care for the children of the well-off.

“The embassy wants to reach out to the immigrants and the Muslim community here in the suburbs, so that’s why there are so many kids tonight.”

I felt completely at home.

“I spend most of my time out here. My studio is one town over. I’m happy out here,” he finished.

Each band member has a particular way of mentally preparing before a performance. But everyone paces. Mike paced. Vijay paced. Ahmad paced. I paced. Sergio paced. Ahmed paced. Before going on stage, everyone put his hands into the circle, un, deux, trois… Brise! “Deux minutes.” I looked over at Ahmed. He had calmed down and was ready to put on the best show he could. We smiled and hugged.

“Good luck, brother,” I whispered to him. I looked at Mike next.

“How long are you staying in Paris this time?” he asked. I answered that I had midterms when I got back.

“Right,” he said. “Next time we have to go and visit the Western Front and see the trenches.” I agreed as I hugged him.

“Good luck, my man.”

“Same to you, my brother.”

The music started and we moved forward to the spotlight, Bienvenue…