A King in Hiding (22 page)

Outside, it's crazy. Friends, long-time supporters and a great crowd of journalists are waiting for us. People greet us and congratulate us, and we all congratulate each other. They ask me questions:

‘Now I'll be able to live with my father, in our own home …'

I smile, really smile, smile at last. I believe it. It's true. Inside my head a new day is dawning and a future is stretching ahead. A future that starts with the European championships in Prague and then stretches on way into the distance.

Yesterday I was just a faceless unknown, visa-less, homeless and stateless. I was a nobody.

Today I am champion of France, and I'm on the way to becoming a normal person again.

EPILOGUE

Fahim's story ends here, at the moment when everything changed so dramatically for him, and he and his father were able to lead a normal life once more. So it falls to me to relate what happened next.

Three days after he received his papers, Nura started work. Ten days later, he and Fahim moved into an apartment, which was furnished for them by the network of supporters that had grown up around them. In under a fortnight, they had won everything for which they had been fighting for nearly three and a half years. Their nightmare was over. What a turnaround in their fortunes! Has a French championship title ever brought its winner so much?

In the summer Fahim flew off to the European championships, where his results were not brilliant. Life is not a fairytale. But a year later, in 2013, he won the World School Chess Championship.

Father and son are now inseparable again. Nura gets up at dawn and arrives at work every morning with the punctuality of someone who recognises the full value of what he has been given. Even if he is unwell he refuses to take time off, as he doesn't want his co-workers to have to cover for him. It is impossible not to admire his tireless determination. On the first Sunday of every month he takes advantage of the lifting of entrance fees to visit the museums and galleries of Paris. But the ordeals of the last few years have left their mark on him. While his dignity has been restored to him, he still says little, and for him solitude has become a way of life. Exile is always a wrench of the most visceral kind.

Fahim, for his part, is still waiting to see his mother again. He struggles now to find the talent and spirit that were so much a part of him when he arrived in France. He still nurtures ambitions, certainly, as though determined to get his own back on fate, and he is resolved never again to be in a position of need. But in snatching his childhood from him, life has clipped his wings. Fear continues to distil its poison. At his age, it's no easy matter to wipe the slate clean of three and a half years of hell. Fahim has already endured more hardship and sorrow than most adults in his adopted country will ever know. He's no longer a king in hiding, but he's still a king in recovery.

Yet as I watch him living from day to day, one minute so withdrawn and the next so dazzling, I can see that deep inside he's still a king.

Sophie Le Callennec

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sophie would like to express her enormous gratitude to Xavier and Fahim for the trust that they have shown in her in asking her to write this story with them and about them, and also for overcoming their natural diffidence in order to tell it to her.

Xavier and Fahim would like to thank Sophie

• for listening, for respecting their feelings and their silences,
  
• for her flights of fancy, disagreements and vetos,
  
• for her complicity and giggles,
  
• for her journey of discovery of chess, her sometimes bizarre questions (yes, Sophie, it's checkmate!) and the good grace with which she put up with them poking fun at her chess-playing skills,
  
• for her depiction in words of the experiences of players and trainers,
  
• for this book, and for their mutual affection.
  

Xavier, Fahim and Sophie would like to thank all those without whose involvement this book would never have been possible:

• the players and organisers of tournaments, who answered Sophie's questions and allowed her free access to the competition halls during events,
  
• France Terre d'Asile, Réseau Éducation Sans Frontières and Hors la Rue for their testimonies,
  
• the protagonists in this story who took the time to tell their stories,
  
• Nura, who despite the barriers of language and natural diffidence returned at length to painful past experiences,
  
• Marion and Laura, who generously lent their mummy to this project and patiently waited for her to finish her work before she finally realised that there was nothing in the fridge.
  

Fahim would like to express his immense gratitude to everyone, whether close friends or anonymous strangers, who has supported him and his father over the years, and who has made this story's happy ending possible. It's impossible for him to thank them all individually, but he would especially like to thank:

• Hélène, Anna-Gaëlle and David, Gilles and Marie-Christine, Catherine and Patrick,
  
• Muhamad, Frédéric and the CADA at Créteil,
  
• Yolande, Jean-Michel and the École Monge at Créteil,
  
• Laurent Cathala and the Mairie of Créteil,
  
• Alain, Alexis, Nadir, Nicolas, Isabelle …
  
• the staff and volunteers of the humanitarian organisations,
  
• Bastien, Hadrien, Jean Baptiste, Joachim, Laura, Olivier … and all the journalists who helped to make the Préfecture change its mind,
  
• Marion, loyal
  France Inter
  listener, without whom nothing would have happened,
  
• and of course Xavier, chess master, trainer and companion, in this book as in life.
  

How many children will we leave to sleep on the streets tonight?