Searching for signs of life in Paris in the month of August

Haussman's boulevards are empty and even the dry cleaners are en vacance leaving your favourite summer clothes trapped.

Paris is the world's emptiest capital in August. It may be inappropriate to compare such a beautiful city with a war zone, but the analogy comes to mind every summer. One can't help remembering the neutron bomb, much talked about in the 1970s and 80s. The weapon was the ultimate in cynicism, because it was designed to kill people but leave buildings intact.

Walking home a few evenings ago, I searched the stone facades in vain for just one lighted window. I thought of Amal Shama'a, a brave Lebanese doctor whom I interviewed 13 summers ago in Beirut. There were daily bombardments then, and Beirut's inhabitants had fled en masse. "I look out at night and I don't see a light; not even a candle," Dr Shama'a said. "Do Cities Die?" was the headline on my newspaper story.

In Paris, it's important to remind oneself that no calamity has occurred; that Parisians are merely exercising their inalienable right to liberté, égalité and August on the seashore. For those inclined to melancholy, it could be depressing.

Part of the charm of living in Paris is the loyalty that grows within a neighbourhood, between residents and the newspaper vendor, chemist, butcher, baker, dry cleaner, hairdresser, librarian.

One by one, in August, they abandon their clients, leaving you to wander from one closed kiosk to another, searching for Le Monde. Were it not for the cheap Franprix with its inferior vegetables and stale baguettes, you could almost die of hunger.

Inevitably, your favourite summer clothes are trapped in the dry cleaners, tauntingly visible behind the plate glass window marked fermeture annuelle.

Even transport becomes a problem; running late for an appointment, I rushed to the local RER train station to find it was shut down for renovation. With not-so-Cartesian logic, most Paris pools close in August, just when people most want to go swimming.

Personally, I enjoy the challenge, venturing far afield for basic supplies, commiserating with those who like me have stayed. A sort of solidarity sets in, as if those remaining were tough survivors. There can be few pleasures more elating than speeding on a bicycle down deserted boulevards on a Sunday morning in August; this city is mine then. It belongs to me.

In the past, a huge influx of tourists replaced departed Parisians. But there are far fewer Americans this summer, so I'm especially kind to those I find poring over maps on street corners. To my delight, a teenager with a backpack thanked me for directions by saying, "You speak English real good." There was once a concerted effort to stagger vacations, to avoid leaving the capital unmanned. Parisians were meant to divide into juilletiste and aoûtiste holiday shifts. But the juilletistes invariably found there was nothing to do when they returned early, and the system more or less broke down.

Crowds can still be found, but you have to work at it. The Champs-Élysées is a safe bet to be filled with Americans, Asians and Gulf Arabs. There are men in suits on the right bank around the Bourse; not even French capitalists, it seems, ever slumber. One clever initiative is a series of free outdoor film projections, similar to drive-in movies in the US. Cinema-goers packed the hillside in Montmartre for an open-air showing of Amélie Poulain.

No self-respecting politician would be caught dead here in August. Whether it's President and Mrs Chirac attending Mass on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion, or Prime Minister Raffarin lunching with Tony Blair south of the Loire, their holiday pastimes are a poor substitute for the usual political antics. Even Mayor Delanoë, the creator of the immensely successful Paris Plage, jumped ship, calling several times a day from Tunisia for news of his ersatz beach on the banks of the Seine.

August is a difficult time for French journalists, and foreign news -- the murder of two British schoolgirls, President Bush's indecision over attacking Iraq - takes far more prominence than at other times of the year. To "fill out" the newspaper and magazine pages, there are the "old chesnuts" - which the French translate literally as marrons: wolves eating lambs in the mountains; local residents complaining about an annual gathering of French travellers; diets. A colleague on a major weekly claims competing editors call each other to collude. "Are you doing prostitution this week? Then we'll do Masonic lodges."

I have a collection of picture postcards on the china cabinet - from Pisa, Brittany, Galway, Cuba and Provence, to show for friends' holidays. It's hard not to feel slightly annoyed at the copper brown suntans flaunted by returning Parisians. I blame it on Coco Chanel, who after liberating women from corsets and giving them bobbed hair, made the suntan fashionable in the 1920s.

As the end of the month approaches, the brown paper comes down from shop windows and the city begins stirring. In a few days we'll be back to traffic jams, honking horns, street demonstrations and budgetary crisis. Already, I miss August in Paris.