OFF-SCRIPT IN PARIS - MARCH 3RD
- Fatijaoui
- Mar 3
- 3 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
The Paris you know is a lie. Not the one with glittering Eiffel Tower selfies, pristine macarons arranged by color, and influencers twirling in floral dresses along the Seine. That Paris exists—it's just not the one I live in. This is for anyone who's ever had plans that collapsed spectacularly, only to realize that the ruins held something more valuable than what they'd imagined building.
Off-script in Paris: Who Am I Even?
Off-script in Paris: Who Am I Even?
Monday, March 3rd, 2025
Dear Journal,
When I was younger, I believed everyone else possessed secret knowledge I hadn't yet discovered. I fantasized about someday accessing this wisdom and finally belonging to the world. Reality, however, shattered these expectations. The principles I held dear seemed crafted exclusively for me, while the rest of humanity operated by entirely different rules.
The uncomfortable truth gradually revealed itself: some are destined to follow rules, while others create them—keeping the masses intoxicated with meritocracy and similar illusions. My quest ended in disappointment. I had imagined a hidden realm that would welcome me to a higher plane of existence. Instead, I found emptiness.
I've come to understand that we're all driven by similar core motivations—often rooted in trauma and a desperate need for recognition. We chase achievements believing they'll finally grant us the success. There were moments I wished I could better conform, but authenticity has always been my compulsion. When I attempted pretense, it invariably ended in disaster. I expected age to bring wisdom, never suspecting my earliest intuitions would prove correct all along.
I tried various paths: working harder, enhancing my appearance, losing weight. Yet nothing was ever sufficient for the world to truly embrace me. These approaches worked miraculously for others, but for me—Fatima—they couldn't overcome the identity the world had assigned me before I even drew breath.
I'm frequently misunderstood by those who refuse to see my perspective. I recall a conversation about gender identity and documentation. When I suggested that seeking validation from outdated institutions was misguided—similar to how gay marriage represents an appeal to systems that historically oppressed—a woman immediately countered with hypotheticals about gay relatives. The conversation ended there as she hopped on this different topic. Having your gender specified on official documents could also endanger those who don't conform to conventional beauty standards or societal expectations of womanhood. It's not always black or white, nuance is required, I believe.
My point was that I cannot expect a fundamentally oppressive system to suddenly become benevolent because it allows me to change my gender marker on a piece of paper. Being misgendered on official documentation pales in comparison to living free from systemic oppression.
For someone with an immigrant background like me, life is a constant battlefield. My documents state I'm French, born in Paris, yet whenever I engage with media, I encounter racist commentary labeling people like me "Français de papier"—French on paper only. A fraud. French by documentation but Arab above all else.
Why should I invest my faith in what my ID declares? These documents, far from being neutral tools of identity, function as weapons of stratification. If they truly held emancipatory power, my reality would be different. My passport could proclaim me a unicorn, but when society treats me like a fish—gasping for air in a hostile environment—what salvation does that official designation offer? In our world, these papers serve a dual purpose: to grant illusory belonging to some while justifying the exclusion of others. They simultaneously validate and invalidate, creating artificial hierarchies of humanity where the "right" documents merely soften oppression while the "wrong" ones codify it. The true violence lies not in what these documents say about us, but in how seamlessly they mask systemic inequality behind bureaucratic legitimacy.