My (Sweet & Sour) Paris Experience — Part 2
“YEEEAH”
“You can buy from these machines,” he said, as he pointed out to the ATM-looking machines located within our eyesight. “Let me help you”.
“Okay,” I said. Parisians are kind! He leads the way towards a machine at the end of the row. I followed.
I saw the list of ticket prices being displayed on the screen and the guy asked “How many tickets do you want?”. “I want this one”, I pointed at the bottom-most option — 10 tickets for 14.9€, while unzipping my backpack to take my wallet. That guy nodded and patiently waited for me to pass the money. Up to this point, he did not seem harmful in any way. But as I grab my wallet and opened it, his hands moved as fast as lighting and snatched all of the notes I had in my wallet.
That really woke me up from my morning slumber. I was surprised, of course, and tried to push him. It wasn’t strong enough to make him fall, but he struggled to keep his balance. As he tried to balance his body, I grab all the notes back and stared right at his face.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry!”, he said. “I just want to help, give me the money, I’ll buy it for you,” He regained my trust. I took a 50€ note and handed it to him. I just still didn’t get it up till this point. He’s a pickpocket! But he’s trying to help me, and he said ‘Sorry’. He can’t be a bad person, right? Oh yeah, he’s a pickpocket AND an actor.
He took the note and went back to the machine. I was behind him, his body kind of covered the screen and I can’t really see what he did, but he pretended to ‘buy’ the ticket by tapping the screen and ‘inserting the money into the machine’ and he quickly returned to me and asked me to take the ticket. When I checked, there was nothing, and he was already 1 meter away from me, walking away. I know he took it. For the sake of trying (and because he was still within my vision walking as if nothing happened, it felt wrong not to do anything), I ran to him and asked him to return my money. Surprisingly, he suddenly scolded me back, acting like he was the victim in front of the public.
I gave up. He’s such a great actor.
I went back to the machine and bought the ticket myself. It wasn’t really good timing to have this happen during my first visit and exactly right after I arrived, but I continued my journey being extra vigilant. I split my money and put it in multiple places. Just in case.
I received a lot of warnings from family and friends about pickpockets in Paris. In fact, one of them knows a family member with a similar experience, her partner lost his luggage after his attention was diverted to a ‘Pak Arab’ who welcomed him at the train station with a hug. He did not notice that an accomplice took his luggage while he was busy talking to the ‘Pak Arab’. In Islam, all Muslims are kin, and there is a Hadith (saying of the Prophet) that emphasizes how Muslims need to treat their Muslim brothers/sisters — ‘You are not a true believer until you love your Muslim brothers as yourself’. So a stranger is not necessarily a complete stranger if you live into this saying. I guess those Arab guys used that to pull their trick on Muslims. But lesson learned for him, and lesson learned for me.
End.
Read about the most common tricks in Paris here :
