Paris Journal 2015 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Have you ever wondered who lives in those romantic-looking houseboats moored along the banks of the Seine in Paris? I certainly have. This morning, I was simply looking up some basic information about the Seine when I stumbled upon a mention of the fact that the supermodel known as Katoucha lived in one of those houseboats. Hers was moored near my favorite Paris bridge, the Pont Alexandre III. Kathoucha was born in Guinea, in Africa, in 1960. When her family was exiled, she was smuggled in her aunt’s luggage and sent to live with an uncle in Mali. She was reunited with her family in Dakar, Senegal, when she was 12. She’d been through a horrific experience even before her family was exiled. At age 9, she was a victim of female circumcision. This is difficult for me to understand, because her father was an educated man; he was the writer and historian Djibril Tamsir Niane. It is even more difficult for me to understand that a female doctor performed the procedure. But in Senegal, Katoucha and her family found happier times. About Dakar, Katoucha said “My father rediscovered with happiness this land, a model of ethnic stability, where he lived well. For my part, I discovered a bright and sunny city and the Senegalese, a happy people who are gentle and love to party.” Katoucha became a rebellious teenager who loved to escape from her parents’ supervision. She ran away time after time. She went to live for a time on the Île de Gorée. With a group of her friends, she went out to discover the greater Senegal. At age 17, she became pregnant. She married so that her little girl (Amy) would have a father and could be baptized in the Muslim tradition. She and her husband immigrated to France so she could pursue a modeling career, and because she’d already been photographed for the cover of Essence magazine – something that embarrassed her husband’s parents. Her modeling career took off in Paris in the 1980s. She became one of the top models for Yves Saint Laurent, co-hosted a TV program called France’s Next Top Model, and starred in a movie in 2007. She had two more children (Alexandre and Aiden) and went through a series of marriages, divorces, betrayals, and personal tragedies – like the murder of her business partner by the Russian mafia. She sought refuge in wine. Her hectic life began to destroy her. At the same time, she, along with models like Iman, Naomi Campbell, Alek Wek, and Esther Kamatari, became part of the “black is beautiful” phenomenon that changed fashion modeling for good. The top black models became the most sought-after by the top designers. Katoucha did a great deal of charitable work. She wanted to create “children’s villages” to support orphans and street kids. She supported Miss France 2000, Sonia Rolland (from Rwanda), in creating children’s villages for the victims of the 1994 genocide in Sonia’s homeland. In 1994, Katoucha quit modeling in order to become an activist against female circumcision. In 2007, she published a book about her personal experience with circumcision. It is titled Dans ma chair (In My Flesh). I believe the book is out of print in France, and never was published in English. On February 1, not long after her book was published, she returned to her houseboat on a winter’s evening after attending a party. She went missing. The police opened a missing persons case. Her body was found downstream, in the Seine, a few weeks later. The police believed her death to be an accidental drowning; but her family told Fox News that they suspected foul play. Coincidentally, or not, the international Day of Zero Tolerance Against Female Genital Mutilation (Tolerance Zero Contre les Mutilations Genitales Feminines) took place on February 6 – just days after Katoucha went missing. The writer Pierrette Fofana, who had reviewed Katoucha’s book in 2007, observed that Katoucha lived this African proverb: “I have long hands to take the money, but the fingers spaced to let it go.” I think I will find a used copy of Dans ma chair. |
Sunday, August 9, 2015
The
sunset sky when we returned to the apartment after dinner at the Bermuda
Onion last night.
Garden at the Musée Carnavalet. |
