Bitter Almonds (14 page)

“And what did you write?”

“Nasser, Aïcha, is name my children.”

“Well done. Can you write them without a model?”

“No. I doing with paper next to me.”

“So your first and last name: you must know them by heart.”

But no. Today Fadila can't recall them, no.

Reading is not going all that well, either. Édith points to
MA
, the beginning of
MADAME
, and Fadila reads
Fa
.
AI
, the beginning of
Aïcha
: Fadila reads
Nasser
. Édith points out the difference in length of the two words, the difference in the initial letters. Clearly the analytical approach isn't working, but neither is the global approach.

When it comes to copying
RUE LABORDE
, Fadila runs the two words together. She has not yet assimilated the notion of a word. Édith shows her that there are medium-sized words, very long words, and little words with two letters, and that you can tell a word precisely because it is separated from the others by a blank space on either side. “Letters are attached, but not words,” she says again.

They are interrupted by a telephone call. When Édith returns, Fadila is finishing copying out a word she found on the cover of the magazine
Le Débat
which had been left on the table, the word
CULTURE
. Not a single mistake. Édith congratulates her. Fadila raises an eyebrow: “Is not enough is writing, I gotta know what is mean.”

 

Édith decides to try something more aggressive. She sets her little laptop down between them. On the screen is the first page of the
Alphalire
method.

“It's a game for learning how to read,” she says airily, as if she had never brought it up before. “Look—”

Fadila interrupts her. “I no see nothing, is computer.”

Édith argues with her. “It's like a sheet of paper, you know. If you can see the letters on a page, you can see them on a computer.”

“I no see,” insists Fadila. She is determined: “My son say is giving headache.”

 

Fadila studies a photograph that came in the mail for Édith. Two young newlyweds smiling outside a church.

“Is family?” she asks.

“My goddaughter.” Édith adds that the young woman is a doctor, her husband is a teacher and they are going to do a year of volunteer service in Africa.

“Is good,” says Fadila. “No is many is doing like that.”

She knows several young Moroccan men who would like to get married but who cannot find suitable girls. “Today girls they is not serious, is running around, too much boys.”

Édith, who knows what these boys would call a suitable girl, protests: “There are a lot of perfectly serious young women.”

“No, is finish. You staying here all day long. You no know what is go on.”

“But your granddaughters are married,” says Édith. “They're fine girls.”

Fadila cannot deny it. It is all thanks to their father, she explains, Zora's husband. “Zora her husband he say is anything happen he cutting throat to everyone.”

“He wouldn't do that to his own daughters, now would he?”

“Yes, is his daughters, is wife, is everybody. Zora is always afraid. Real Moroccan man he that way.”

Fadila is furious. That very morning, a woman whom she has been working for over the last few months lost her temper with her (over her schedule?) and told her she could replace her with ten other people. With so many people out of work . . .

Édith tries to calm her down: “You should have told her that you can find work in ten other houses.”

To no avail. “Is someone working your house is like family,” says Fadila. “You no has to say is ten others can replace you.”

For her, work creates a reciprocal bond between two people that goes far beyond an employment contract. You don't go undoing those bonds in an offhand, unilateral way. On the contrary, you do everything you can never to break them.

 

She knows her son's telephone number by heart. Édith tries to persuade her that if she knows it by heart, one number after the other, she will be able to write it.

It's not altogether true, but almost. Where numbers are concerned, the analytical method seems to work. Numbers, of course, are not nearly as abstract as letters, provided you keep to their basic function, and use them essentially for measuring quantities.

 

Tension is running high this particular Tuesday. Fadila wanted to come to work at the beginning of the afternoon but, when she got there, she realized she had forgotten her key. There was no one at home. So she had to go back to her house to fetch it then come back.

Now she finds that the shirts hanging to dry have been buttoned from top to bottom, and she has to unbutton them to iron them, and it's exasperating. She comes to complain to Édith, just when Édith is struggling with a particularly tricky passage. “Blame my husband,” says Édith, who knows that Fadila respects Gilles and is very fond of him.

She immediately regrets her words, not because she used him to get out of it—she wasn't lying, after all—but for telling Fadila that her husband, in addition to being amiable and cheerful, hangs up the laundry to dry.

 

Fadila tells Édith how in the métro she found the direction to La Courneuve right away, because she knows the
L
. For the first time she didn't have to ask another passenger to confirm whether she was on the right platform. “Just like everybody,” she says.

Édith takes her by the shoulders. “You see! Now you've understood that the first letter of a word can help you to recognize it.”

Of her own accord Fadila says she would like to be able to read the names of the directions of the two or three métro lines she tends to use. Édith seizes the opportunity and writes:
LA COURNEUVE
and
VILLEJUIF
.

Fadila may have been discouraged at not being admitted to a literacy course, but she hasn't given up for all that. She wants so badly to be normal (she wants to be able to read like everyone else. Being illiterate is not just a handicap, it's also a source of shame) and she has a great need for autonomy (it's so trying, always having to depend on others). She isn't asking for help or assistance; on the contrary, she would like to have the means to be able to get by on her own.

 

One day she comes with a form from the Social Security which she does not know how to fill out. Her family doctor gave it to her already a while ago. It's the form that has to be used to choose one's primary care provider.

The doctor filled in his part of the form. Fadila would like Édith to help her with the rest.

“You can do it,” says Édith. “It's not complicated. Here you write your first name, there your last name, and then you sign here.”

Fadila is afraid she will “make a mess.” Édith shows her that they can avoid the risk by writing in pencil first, and if it's okay, she'll go over it in ink. With no further ado Fadila fills in the blanks for
First Name
and
Last Name.

Just as she is about to sign she asks, “I do like always at the bank?”

Édith is familiar with her usual zigzag on the back of her checks, and stops her: “No, do it the way the doctor did, look. Here he wrote his name, Marc Aubenton, and here he signed M. AUBENTON. You can sign F. AMRANI.”

A printed envelope came with the form. Fadila folds the paper in two and slips it in the envelope. “You gotta stamp?” she says to Édith, “I no having at home.”

 

Her son and daughter-in-law are expecting a second child. Édith congratulates her.

Fadila screws up her face. It's not that her son isn't pleased, he only has one child so far and he has to have a son someday. But it's already a tight squeeze in a studio that measures only 215 square feet. What will it be like with four of them? Nasser asked long ago to be re-housed, to no avail. There is nothing on offer, or nothing acceptable.

“And what about your daughter-in-law,” asks Édith, “is she all right? She isn't too tired?”

“She is,” says Fadila harshly. “Is sleeping all the time, never going out.”

She cannot understand why this young woman who has “everything she needing thank God” coddles herself to such a degree. She certainly wouldn't have spent all day sleeping just because she was pregnant.

Fadila would do a better job of reading if she didn't always try too quickly to guess before anything else.
Édith asks her to take one of the envelopes addressed to her out of her bag and read it. It should work: Fadila knows perfectly well what is written on the envelope.

But instead of saying
MADAME
she says
Aïcha
. And when she realizes her mistake, and properly identifies
MADAME
, for the following word she reads
AMRANI
: it says
FADILA
, she should have recognized it, there is no word she knows better than that one. And
AMRANI
comes right after.

Once her memory has been refreshed, she manages better. It is obvious that these work sessions are few and far between.

 

Édith spends a week in London at a symposium on translation. She is in charge, with a colleague, of the days devoted to literary translation. It has taken a lot of work, but things are going smoothly, their discussions are practical and fruitful. There are a few memorable moments as they debate the sample cases, translating Mia Couto or Cormac McCarthy.

No sooner is she back in Paris than she has to leave again. Her father, who lives alone in Lyon, has to undergo an emergency operation. She stays with him for the forty-eight hours he is at the clinic and the days that follow, the time it takes to organize the home care that he will need for a time.

When Édith next sees Fadila, three weeks have gone by.

There was a post-it on the washing machine, a very recognizable
FADIIA
and two numbers one above the other. Édith gathered that Fadila had written down her hours for each of the two Tuesdays she'd come during her absence, but she was unable to decipher the numbers.

Fadila knows what she wrote, however, she can read her own writing: a 2 for two hours and underneath it a
1
plus a little dash for an additional half hour.

Once she has finished her ironing, she comes to Édith and asks, “You having time today?”

Édith suggests they start with what she knows well, in principle, writing her first and last name and, to Édith's astonishment, Fadila writes both words correctly without hesitating.

It is the first time. Édith is puzzled, but delighted; she hides her bewilderment but not her joy.

“Is writing at home,” says Fadila.

“Every day?”

“No!” She rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “Sometimes.”

“That explains it,” says Édith, who understands even less about the process as time goes by.

 

Fadila leaves early this Tuesday, she has some cooking to do. It is the Day of Ashura tomorrow. “Is holiday, like Christmas.” Special dishes are prepared, “normally is chicken,” but not this year. Because of the bird flu epidemic Fadila no longer eats poultry; nor do any of her family. And yet she does like it: “Is prefer chicken to meat.” But with everything she's seen on television, “Is disgusting,” she says. Her children as well, “They think is disgusting.”

Édith repeats what you can read in all the papers, that there is no danger in France, and you can go on safely buying chicken, unlike in Vietnam or Turkey. She reminds Fadila that ten years earlier it was beef you weren't supposed to eat, because of mad cow disease.

Fadila remembers. She chuckles: “Is politics.” Or perhaps she meant politicians, because she goes on to say, “They has to talk, otherwise is television going to close! Has to find something to say, otherwise is no more work!”

 

She has come early. “I coming early to see Aïcha—is a bitch. Is not there.”

Édith points out that she's used a harsh word.

“I doing on purpose,” says Fadila. “I stay all weekend at home, no one they calling, no one to see how I doing. You think is normal, old woman all alone and no one they calling? Aïcha she no has a husband.”

That's another problem, says Édith. But Fadila goes on to explain, “If she no having husband, she can looking after his mother.”

“You could have called your daughters yourself,” says Édith.

“No,” protests Fadila, “Is me old one, is me the others they gotta call asking news.”

Édith recalls a passage in Proust, in
Swann's Way
, where at a reception Madame de Gallardon tries to attract the attention of her young cousin, the Princesse de Guermantes, and when she is unsuccessful, she takes umbrage:
It is not up to me to take the first step, I'm twenty years older than she is.

“Who I gonna go to when I'm old, retired, huh?” fulminates Fadila. “My daughter is look like I not even her mother. How he going looking after me when I'm old? They no looking after me even when I has good health!”

She does not calm down until it is time to leave. Édith suggests they do a bit of reading, but all she hears in reply is a curt, “'Nother time.”

 

Several times in a row the same thing happens. “Not today, I'm tired,” or “I no having time,” or “Next time.” But she agrees to take some homework with her. She says she will do it.

 

She brings back a sheet that proves she really has worked at home. She has copied her name and address, and she's in a good mood.

“It's good, there are no mistakes,” says Édith, after she's had a look. “But you've written the words any old how,
rue
,
madame
,
Paris
,
62
,
Laborde
. . .”