catherine malabou

paris goes east text by CATHERINE MALABOU I live on the Rue de l’Ermitage in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. It meets the Rue des Pyrénées and the Rue Ménilmontant on either end, and is set, discreetly, at the heart of a triangle whose corner points are formed by three subway stations: Gambetta, Jourdain, and Ménilmontant. This neighborhood — to which the Rue de l’Ermitage belongs, the so-called Hauts de Belleville [Heights of Belleville] — has long been neglected by wealthy Parisians due to its bad reputation. At the turn of the 20th century, for 30 years, Belleville boasted only dilapidated houses, without heat or electricity, all slated to be destroyed. Children looked for jobs as soon as they had finished elementary school. Delinquency was ubiquitous. The Bonnot Gang led a reign of terror there for a time. Today, though pockets of poverty remain — namely, in the streets bordering the…