A King in Hiding (8 page)

Every morning he takes me to the beach. The first day I can hardly wait. I long to go swimming, and the sea is so vast and beautiful! I tear down the beach, but when my feet hit the water I get a big shock: it's absolutely freezing! As consolation I tell myself it's dangerous, because I can't swim yet.

In the afternoons we play chess. At the Plancoët tournament I score four points out of nine and win a fine cup. I'll keep it in my room at the hostel.

In the evening we get excited and play all sorts of games before supper; we play tricks on each other and collapse in fits of giggles. I learn how to play a game with Tarot cards, in which each player is dealt a big hand and you have to try to take the ‘kitty'. When it gets dark, Xavier – who's a great film fan – hangs a sheet up in the garage and invites round the neighbours, an elderly couple who live next door and an English couple who never stop talking. He's brought the video projector that he uses for our lessons, and he calls it his ‘Cinema Paradiso'.

On 26 July it's my birthday. I'm nine years old.

‘Xavier, how old are you?'

I'm amazed to discover that he's only as old as my father: with his beard and white hair I thought he was much older. Xavier gives me a bicycle and teaches me to ride it. I love it! Hills are tough, though.

‘Xavier, I know why the Tour de France doesn't go through Brittany.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because the hills are too steep.'

When we get back to Créteil there's a letter waiting for us: our asylum application has been refused. My father isn't surprised: Frédéric has told him this always happens first time round. So he isn't worried. Nor am I. He and Frédéric prepare a new application to present to the tribunal: thicker and fuller, with more documents and details. Together they fill out stacks of forms, write dozens of letters, make mountains of photocopies. Everything has to be translated, which costs a lot. But everyone is confident. Next time we'll be granted asylum.

Chapter 8

MY SECRET DREAM

I
n September I'm moved up into the mainstream class at school, along with Stéphanie. Most children stay in the special class for non-French speakers for at least a year. But Mme Faustine and the head teacher have explained to me that I'm ready to join the others and do the same lessons as them.

From day one I'm bored. Everything's too easy. It's just like in Bangladesh: the teachers make a big fuss about saying things that are completely obvious. Useless. Annoying. They ask us pointless questions, and make us read books that bore us all to tears and then ask us stupid questions about them. I hate school. I don't even like going swimming: you can't just splash around, you have to learn to swim, and they're always making us get out of the water and stand around waiting, and I get cold.

There's only one thing I look forward to, and that's going to the chess club. On coaching evenings things always follow the same routine. When we arrive, Xavier talks to my father – or at least he tries to. He asks him about our life and how things are going. My father tells him proudly about my school marks and shows him my reports. Xavier offers him advice about life in France, and about how to make our money go further. They talk about everything. Except ‘papers': my father quickly realises that Xavier's had enough of hearing about asylum applications. And our family: Xavier realises even more quickly that it's a subject that's too painful for us. Then it's time to play chess.

‘OK Fahim, are you ready?'

I feel a thrill of anticipation. We sit down facing each other across the chessboard. Sometimes Xavier makes me work on my own moves, and sometimes he makes me work on the moves of grandmasters like Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov and Bobby Fischer. We look at them together, do calculations, make up variants. I love thinking up moves, trying them out, advancing, but Xavier makes me slow down a bit:

‘Careful now, think. Decide on your goals. What do you want to do: imprison the queen or aim for the king?'

‘Um, a bit of both maybe? I dunno, we'll see, whichever's best!'

Then he explains at length why I should take my time. Meanwhile I'm boiling over with impatience.

XP
:
Fahim was gifted, no one could doubt that. His tactical skills were outstanding. But as a strategist he was something of a rough diamond. He had no idea about strategy, no conception even of what strategy was. He didn't plan his moves ahead. There was a huge amount of work to do to get him up to standard in this area, so that he could deploy his talents to the full. As soon as his French was good enough, we got down to it.

Without being a great worker, he was serious, motivated, conscientious and involved. But his progress was held up by his circumstances. In Bangladeshi chess clubs, members play each other every day. In France, they come just for coaching and competitions. People play each other online: the web has killed off the conviviality of clubs. All good players, even the youngest, have a computer. Fahim didn't even have access to the internet.

‘Fahim, do you know who said: “To win against me, you have to beat me three times: once in the opening, once in the middlegame and once in the endgame”?'

‘It was Alekhine, wasn't it?'

‘Precisely so. What you need to do is to work on your endgames. And after that we'll look at your openings.'

‘But I'd much rather play whole games!'

‘I'm sure you would. I'm not here to “play” with you, though; I'm here to improve your game.'

Sometimes when he isn't looking I watch Xavier. He's the complete opposite of my father. He doesn't care about his appearance, his shirts are all rumpled and his hair is too long – he often forgets to go the barber's. I like it when he has his hair cut and wears a blue shirt that matches his eyes: it makes him look distinguished.

‘When it comes to your endgame, Fahim, all you ever do is try to checkmate.'

‘Well yes, I want to win, don't I!'

‘I can see that: your one aim is to destroy your opponent's king.'

‘I want to crush him, massacre him.'

‘And yet there are other ways of winning the game. You can win through a promotion, by getting one of your pawns to the opposite side of the board and queening.'

‘But while I'm doing that my opponent could checkmate?'

‘Of course you need to keep your eye on your opponent! But if you concentrate your efforts on queening, you don't need to go to checkmate: if he's a queen down, your opponent might as well give up there and then.'

‘Hey, I like it! Do you think I could do it without my opponent realising?'

Xavier laughs.

‘Are there other ways of winning?'

‘Over the next few weeks you're going to work on promotion. But you can also immobilise your opponent.'

‘One day will you show me how?'

XP
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When he arrived in 2008, Fahim was good enough to win the French under-10s championship with ease. But as he arrived late in the season, he was too late to get his membership card and enter the 2009 championship. We had great hopes for 2010. Then to our huge disappointment we discovered over that winter that the rules required entrants to have lived on French soil for three years. Fahim would have to wait until 2012 to try his chances. To win.

As Xavier reveals the secrets of the game to me, he also teaches me funny things like the different ways of saying ‘checkmate'. When the king is blocked in on the back rank by a row of his own pawns and threatened by a rook, it's called a ‘back-rank mate' or ‘corridor mate'. When the king can't move because all the squares around him are occupied, it's called ‘smothered mate'.

‘And when the opposing queen is right up against the king and pinning him down so he can't move?'

‘Ah, that's the “kiss of death”!'

While these sessions are going on, my father sits in a corner, silent and discreet. Sometimes he gets up to look at the chessboard and then sits down again. Sometimes he goes off quietly to look round the club and see if there's anything useful he can do. Sometimes he offers ‘Exavier' a coffee. Xavier always says yes, and my father rushes off to make it. The last thing he does, every time, is to go outside and spend ages cleaning Xavier's motorbike, as though he wants to get it looking as good as new. It's his way of thanking him for everything: for his coaching sessions, his lessons, his time, his advice, his encouragement, his sympathetic ear, his financial support, his kindness and his cheerfulness. And for his friendship.

Like any teacher, Xavier can be annoying. When he's cross with me he talks, and that's annoying. He does it with the others too. During lessons he sometimes shows one of us up in front of the others. Especially when we haven't done our exercises:

‘Don't bother to make excuses. I've heard them all: my sister scratched her foot and the scabs fell in the computer, the anti-virus software had the flu, the cat fell in the washing machine … I couldn't care less. Everyone's entitled not to do their exercises once or twice in the year. But don't bother telling me why. All I know is that this week doing your exercises wasn't a priority for you.'

Then he often adds:

‘But I still like you, even so!'

One day, though, I push him too far:

‘I'm sorry Xavier, I haven't done my exercises.'

Exasperated, he shows me the door:

‘Goodbye.'

After that I'm always careful to do my exercises.

I can understand why Xavier is fed up when we ‘forget' to do the work he sets us, but I can't understand his other obsession, which to me seems very strange: he likes us to be ‘punctual'. In Bangladesh no one is ever on time, so no one ever has to wait for anyone else. Xavier just complicates matters by always arriving on time, or even a bit early! He gives me a lecture every time, and sometimes he goes on and on:

‘Fahim, this is the third time you've been late for coaching. It's rude. Punctuality is the politeness of kings. Do you think I've got nothing better to do than wait for you to deign to turn up? The next time you're late I'm not going to wait, I warn you.'