JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The Belleville neighborhood on the east side of Paris is famous for its vibrant mix of ethnicities and cultures. It's long been home to immigrants from North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, with large communities of Muslims and Jews. At a cafe bar there, men from both faiths have been gathering together for decades. Rebecca Rosman sends us this postcard.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
REBECCA ROSMAN, BYLINE: If you walked past this tiny cafe in northeast Paris, you might not think much of it. On most days, it's just a small group of older men playing cards in a small room.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: La belote.
ROSMAN: La belote.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: La belote.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: They argue, laugh and escape loneliness. But nowadays, this type of gathering is a rarity in Paris. These men are a mix of Jews and Muslims, and for decades, they have been coming here every week to play belote, a French card game. It's a pretty subdued gathering now, but years ago, the room would've been filled with men shouting and teasing one another. You couldn't escape the cigarette smoke. Back then, it was an association for retired Tunisian immigrants.
RENE RUBENS: (Through interpreter) We played cards. People shouted. People sang.
ROSMAN: That's Rene Rubens (ph), one of the old regulars who in 2018, transformed the space into this cafe bar.
RUBENS: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: Over time, most have left, Rubens says. They died, got sick or simply stopped coming. At night, Parisian hipsters come here now for the house-made honey wine. But a couple times a week, the remaining card players return. On a recent afternoon, a few regulars showed up - longtime friends, Jewish and Muslim, mostly born in Tunisia.
MAX JORNEAUX: (Through interpreter) We have the same culture, the same food, the same music and the same language. We live together.
ROSMAN: This is Max Jorneaux (ph), 80, a chatty retired pharmacist who has been coming here for decades. He says this meetup represents a version of Tunisia he remembers from his childhood, a place where religion mattered less than neighborhood and habit.
JORNEAUX: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: He says growing up in Tunisia, Jews and Muslims lived side by side, shared the same memories. "We grew up together," he says. "Do you get that? We are together."
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: Outside this cafe, there are growing divisions. France is home to the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in the European Union. Conversations between the two have grown increasingly tense since the October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel and subsequent Gaza war. But inside the cafe, there's always been one unspoken rule - politics stays out.
RUBENS: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: "We're here to have a good time and talk about other things," Rene Rubens says. That includes younger generations who come in the evenings after the card players are gone, like Munir Hamami (ph), a 39-year-old, who grew up in the neighborhood.
MUNIR HAMAMI: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: He calls Rubens an institution. Everyone knows him, he says.
HAMAMI: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: We appreciate each other as human beings, he says. We don't care about religion.
Rubens says that's true, but worries that outside this space, things aren't always so simple.
RUBENS: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: He says he worries people increasingly stay inside their own social and political bubbles.
RUBENS: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: "You stay in your bubble. You can't evolve," he says.
RUBENS: (Non-English language spoken).
ROSMAN: "Getting past that," he says, "is just a question of empathy. There's people who say they don't like Jews, don't like Black people, don't like Arabs just because of what they seem to represent to them," he says. "But when you look, if you speak with the person, you realize they're just another person."
(SOUNDBITE OF CARDS SLAPPING A TABLE)
ROSMAN: Which is why every Tuesday and Thursday, the card players keep returning.
Rebecca Rosman, NPR News, Paris.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAFT PUNK & JULIAN CASABLANCAS SONG, "INSTANT CRUSH") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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