A King in Hiding (2 page)

Chapter 2

LIFE WAS GOOD

XAVIER PARMENTIER
:
I'm a chess master. I've taught chess for over 30 years now. Before I met Fahim and he became my pupil, I could locate Bangladesh on a globe, sharing a border with India. I knew it was one of the world's poorest countries, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you that its capital was Dhaka. And I didn't know either that it is so much at the mercy of typhoons, cyclones, tsunamis and floods that by the end of the century, unless we do something to halt climate change, it will be swallowed up by the oceans.

It was when I began to take an interest in Fahim that I started to really find out about this country where he was born and spent the first eight years of his life: a country smaller than Tunisia with a population larger than Russia, where one child in five suffers from malnutrition even before they are born. And before this little guy turned up at the club that I ran, I would certainly never have associated Bangladesh with the world of chess. It didn't take me long to realise that Fahim was very different from our usual image of immigrants from developing countries. He didn't live in a shanty town in Dhaka, and he wasn't a street kid, roaming the dusty highways and dodging cars and cycle rickshaws to beg a few coins from passers by who didn't care. He hadn't left his country to flee poverty. Quite the reverse, in fact: he came from a middle-class family who, without being exactly wealthy, nevertheless lived a life that was tranquil and free of troubles.

My father was a fireman: he saved people's lives. When there was an accident, he used to go off in the red truck with the siren blaring. When there was a fire, he would put it out. When someone was drowning, he would dive into the river to save them.

In the evening, he used to tell us stories about the people whose lives he'd saved, the tragedies he'd prevented. And then there were the times when he couldn't help, like the story about the man who woke up in the middle of the night to find his house was on fire, and who was so poor that his first thought was to save the only thing he owned, his television. When he went back in to save his sons, it was already too late: the building had gone up in flames, with his children imprisoned inside. He stood there watching. He howled and wailed. Then he picked up his television and hurled it into the flames. My father also told us how his commanding officer had sacked him from the ambulance team because he'd refused to demand money from a very poor woman who had to be rushed to hospital because she was having a baby.

Then my father got old: he was over 40 and he retired from his job. He didn't save people's lives any more, but he went to the barracks every day because we lived nearby, because he was friends with the firemen, and because he liked looking after the garden there. And he had a new job: he set up a car hire company. The rest of the time he played chess. He and a friend started a chess club. People poked fun at first, but then they stopped: it was a very good club and it became famous.

We were rich. We lived in a big house with two rooms: a bedroom with a double bed for me and my sister, and the living room, which had my parents' bed in the corner. And the baby's bed too.

It was a lovely house, but it needed a lot of repairs. One day, a great chunk of ceiling came down right beside me and scared the life out of me. Cyclones were frightening too: it felt as though the wind was going to tear the walls apart. It wasn't just me who got worried either: our neighbours would come to our house and say prayers in Arabic. The monsoon season didn't bother me though. The rains were torrential, there was water everywhere and everyone got fed up with it, but it wasn't frightening. When the courtyard turned into a lake, the neighbours would pile up sandbags so they could walk about without getting their feet wet. Sometimes the water would come up over the steps and into the house.

I knew we were rich because my father was the only one in our family – in our whole neighbourhood – to buy a cow for Eid: everyone else just had sheep or chickens. I would lead the cow home and my father and a friend would cut its throat. The blood would spurt all over the place, but I was used to it. What I didn't like was the look in the cow's eyes as it died: I could see it was afraid. Would it be the same for a person, I used to wonder?

On the day of the feast, my mother and father would prepare food for everybody: family, neighbours and firemen. My mother's cooking was so good that everyone wanted to come and share with us. So she would spread the floor with big cloths of all colours for our guests to sit on. Then we could dig in. What a spread!

I liked everything about my life. Except for school. In the morning my parents would shake me awake, gently at first, then more roughly. In the end I would get up, but I was always in a bad mood. I wouldn't speak until I got to school. As soon as I was back with my friends again I would feel better.

I spent my first year in a school where the lessons were too easy. I was always top of the class. So my parents sent me to a private school that was very expensive. I was a good pupil and did as I was told. I didn't have much choice. In Bangladesh the teachers were strict: if you didn't work, they hit you with a stick. There were 70 of us in my class, and we all took turns to get beaten. Or all the boys did, anyway: the girls used to work hard and never got beaten. One day the teacher hit a boy so hard that he had to stay at home for a week while his wounds healed.

Like all the others, I went to school in the morning and studied with tutors in the afternoon. Some of the children in my class cheated, and had private lessons with teachers from the school, so that they would know what to revise for the tests. The tutors my sister and I had didn't know which topics were going to come up, so they would make us do our homework and then give us more. When it was time to pray, I would sometimes tell them I had to go to prayers and then run off and play with my friends.

There was a shared courtyard in front of our house where we used to play cricket, and sometimes badminton. There was a big tree with branches that got in the way, but no one could remember who it belonged to: the neighbours argued about who planted it, and unless they could agree no one could cut it back. When we got fed up with the tree, my friends and I would go off to find other places to play. When I was little, we used to go swimming in the lake. But then it got all dirty and overgrown, with snakes lurking in the tall grass, so we stayed away, even when the heat was suffocating. We would roam around to other places, along the path behind the firemen's barracks or in front of the mosque. One time, our parents came out looking for us everywhere. When he found me my father was furious, with big black angry eyes. He told me I had to stay either in the courtyard or at the barracks.

Sometimes my mother and sister used to take me to the cinema. We would queue up to get in and it was always jam-packed. The films were always love stories (with a little dance) with a happy ending (and a little dance). Even when the hero died, he would come back for the finale (and a little dance). I liked animations better.

My sister was four years older than me. Her name was Jhorna, which means ‘waterfall'. I was always arguing with her, which used to make our parents cross:

‘Dad gave that money to
me
to buy a snack.'

‘No! He said we had to share it.'

‘That's not true! He said I could spend it on what I wanted!'

Every morning it was a race for the bathroom:

‘
I'm
going to have my shower.'

‘No, I said
I'm
going first.'

‘Too late!'

If I complained to my mother, she would punish us both.

‘I don't want to hear any more!'

We were always yelling at each other, but we loved each other very much. I loved my little brother too. His name was Fahad. At the clinic when he was born, everyone wanted to hold him: my father's mother and my mother's mother, who looked like the prime minister of Bangladesh, and all my aunts, uncles and cousins. Even I was allowed to hold him. I was happy and amazed: I'd never seen such a tiny baby.

I spent more and more of my time playing chess. Every day my father would teach me new things: how to work out moves in advance, how to avoid making mistakes and how to avoid traps. The pieces of this giant jigsaw began to fall into place, the muddle started to sort itself out, and I got better. Soon I was begging my father to enter me for a tournament. I'd heard that the top thirteen players would win lessons from a FIDE World Chess Federation instructor. I was five and had only been playing for two months, but my father quickly agreed.

On the day of the tournament I was excited and fought like a lion. I won three games out of six. In the last round, my opponent was very laid back. He knew I was a beginner and assumed I wasn't that good. So I took advantage of it and beat him. When I found out I was the thirteenth finalist I was stunned.

My father was so happy he hugged me. His friends had come to watch me play, and they congratulated me and gave me beaming smiles. Back at home, I told my mother the good news. She was really impressed.

My first lesson with the FIDE instructor showed me more about the world of chess: it was a real jungle, with all the jungle's dangers and predators, and all its hiding places and traps. I explored every inch of it, and got on so well that my parents decided to pay for me to have private lessons. Although he'd played every day for 30 years, before long I was beating my father.

I took part in several tournaments in Dhaka, playing against both children and adults. I won trophies and sometimes even medals, and I was so happy to take them home to my mother – except for the time when I left my medal on the bus by mistake, and I was so furious I nearly cried. My parents loved it when I won, but when I lost against weaker players my father would scowl at me. One day he was so angry with me that he refused to take me back for the rest of the championship. My mother asked her brother to drive me instead. Upset, I won the last five rounds. A government minister awarded me the trophy. The newspapers began to talk about me, and I was even on the television.

I was six years old when I asked my father if I could take part in a tournament in India. He agreed, but my mother was horrified:

‘But it's too far away! It takes too long to get there! He'll be worn out by the journey! He'll get lost in the streets of Kolkata!'

‘
Amma
, it's only for a week. I'll be careful.'

I begged and begged her, and in the end she gave in.

‘You won't do anything silly? You'll eat properly? You'll sleep? You won't go out on the streets alone?'

I promised her everything, and ran off to tell the news to the whole neighbourhood. I couldn't wait, I was counting the days. At last the day came when it was time to set off.