It is a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures. Once you leave your birthplace nothing is ever the same.

The trail of lime trees outside our building is still a public loo. …where else are they supposed to go to the toilet in a city where public toilets are about as common as UFO...

You’d think the sight of beautiful Place Vendôme would lift my spirits but oddly the arc of jewellery – so obviously beyond the means of a jobless person like me – only depresses me more....

I know of no other place that is so fascinating yet so frustrating, so aware of the world and its own place within it but at the same time utterly insular. A country touched by...