Bitter Almonds (7 page)

“What do you mean! You write your name without hesitating, and absolutely correctly: I call that important!”

Three and a half months to get this far: Édith's no fool, it has taken a long time. But at the rate of fifteen minutes a session—twenty minutes now and again—it isn't so long, really.

“And now it's time to start on your last name,” she says, writing out
AMRANI
in capital letters.

Fadila knows that, like everyone, she has a first and last name. She knows that she is not the only one with the last name Amrani, and that there are a lot of Fadilas as well, but, she says, “Is only one Fadila Amrani.”

Édith deconstructs
Amrani
into three syllables, more out of habit than conviction. With a pencil she draws a circle around each syllable. She says them out loud,
AM
,
RA
,
NI
and tries to get Fadila to say them; Fadila isn't in the mood.

She points out that the first syllable is made up of two letters, the
A
that she now knows well, and an
M
. Édith holds Fadila's hand and explains the graphic composition of the letter as she writes it with her: a straight line from top to bottom, then a little slanted line this way, another slanted line the other way, and then yet another big straight line from top to bottom.

Fadila can't get it. “Keep trying,” says Édith. “It will come.”

Fadila draws two parallel vertical lines and then, between the two of them, the two slanted lines, perfectly correctly.

Édith sits up straight, raising her hands: “That's great! You've got it. You've found your own way of writing it, that's a good way to learn. Go on, do another one.”

For their next lesson, Fadila will write more
M
's and
AM
's, and copy out
AMRANI
.

 

This time it is Fadila who asks Édith if she has time for a lesson. But you can't be at your best every day: she can't write her first name from memory anymore, and she hasn't got the
AM
at all; the letter
A
is not as well drawn as the previous time and the
M
doesn't come out right.

From long ago, from her own years of primary school, Édith hears the voice of a cantankerous woman harping on, “Rome wasn't built in a day.” A phrase that she did not find the least bit encouraging.

They work on the
M
and the
A
. Things are looking up.

Édith has an idea, an idea so patently elementary that she cannot help, once again, but take the measure of how modest her aims with Fadila have become. She takes a sheet of fine cardboard and a thick black felt-tip pen from the shelf where she has a small stationery supply. On the white cardboard she writes, in big capital letters,
FADILA AMRANI
.

“Take it home with you. Put it up in a good spot where you can see it. Somewhere in the kitchen, for example.”

“No, I putting on television,” says Fadila. “Like that, is going into the eyes.”

 

After Fadila has gone home, Édith takes another sheet of cardboard and writes the same two words on it, then looks for a place to put it in the bathroom. She imagines Fadila there ironing, her back to the window, so she pins it to the wall just opposite, at eye level.

The following time, as she is setting up the ironing board, Fadila sees it at once. It makes her laugh. But it bothers her, too:

“What is saying, you husband?”

“He thinks it's a very pretty name,” says Édith, and she isn't lying.

They work on
AMRANI
. The
M
is still giving Fadila trouble. She calls it, “that one I no liking.”

They have to keep going. “Let's try the
R
now.” Édith circles the letter that is in the third position in her name.

“I knowing that one,” says Fadila. “Is train, RER A, RER B, RER C.”

Excellent. Édith writes
RER
, shows her that the letter
R
comes up twice and, while she's at it, points to the letter
E
in between. Next to it she writes the letter
A
.

“I knowing that one,” says Fadila again.

“Of course you do, you know the
A
.”

“I knowing the
B
, too.”

She explains that
B
is the first letter of the code for the electronic lock outside her building.

Édith would like to seize the opportunity to have her work on the code, but Fadila, who knows how to do it—she mimes the gesture with her index finger—cannot remember what comes after the
B
.

“It's probably numbers, no?”

She can't remember.

Fadila copies out
RER A
,
RER B
, and
RER C
, quickly and neatly. Yet they had never studied the
E
. It's the first time she's written it, and she manages to draw it without any trouble, or so it would seem.

On a sheet of paper, in a column, Édith writes
RER A
,
RER B
,
RER C
, and beneath it,
FADILA AMRANI
. She asks Fadila to find the letters that are shared by all these words. Fadila can't see it. She knows
A
and
B
. She has just copied out
R
and
E
. But to find these same letters within a word must require other skills: she can't do it.

I so tired,” she says, as soon as she comes in.
It's the heat. But there's something else, too. “All morning is arguing with Madame Aubin.” This lady lives in her building on rue de Laborde, and Fadila works for her on Tuesday mornings. The woman lives with her twenty-five-year-old daughter and cannot put up with her anymore. She is overwrought because of it and takes it out on Fadila.

“What does that girl do, then, to annoy her mother so much?”

“Alice?”

Fadila likes the girl. She's watched her grow up. She's a chubby young woman who always wears black. “She thinking with black no one seeing how she is fat!” She has just found a job and is making a good living. “She shopping, shopping, makeup, shoes, bags . . . Her room is so many things, looking like department store.” She wears things once and leaves them to be washed, “Madame Aubin she going crazy.”

After a pause she says, “I writing very much yesterday.”

“Good,” says Édith. “Let's go over your name,
AMRANI
. Go ahead, write the beginning,
AM
.”

With no model to copy from, Fadila makes a perfect
M
. Édith congratulates her and asks her to put an
A
first: “You know, the first letter of your name.”

Fadila makes an
F
. She must have mixed up first and last names. In any event, she's written the first letter of her first name. So now she knows how to single out the first letter of a word, thinks Édith, but if she's honest she knows that's not at all sure.

But the fact that Édith has asked her to write
A
, the first letter of her last name, and Fadila has written
F
, the first letter of her first name, is troubling: it means she doesn't know what the few letters she does know how to write are called.

With the model in front of her Fadila can copy out her first and last names flawlessly.

“Superb,” says Édith. “Before you go, can you write
FADILA
for me in your head?”

Fadila writes
FAILA
. Without the model she cannot tell which letter is missing. With the model, and a bit of effort, she can get it.

Édith hands her the sheet where she did such a good job of copying out her first and last name, and says, “Soon, you'll see, you'll know them both by heart.”

 

Édith needs someone to take over from her, a literacy course where she can enroll Fadila. It's just going too slowly; they're not making any headway. Fadila has to be made to work every day.

Above all she needs to have real classes, given by good professionals. Édith hasn't known how to go about it. She's been feeling her way, and hasn't found either a method or the trigger.

And vacation time is coming. At the end of July Fadila will be leaving for Casablanca to stay with a cousin. By the time she gets back, Édith and her family will have left Paris in turn. If she comes to work at their place while they're gone, she'll see no one. Come September, what will she remember of the little she has learned?

Édith goes through the many literacy centers listed in the west of Paris. Fadila agrees to take a course when she gets back on condition that it is in the evening. During the day she is “working.” And her schedule is not regular, she explains to Édith—who had already noticed as much. She can't commit to taking a class before seven or eight in the evening.

Will she have the energy to go back out at night after a full workday? She'd found it hard the first time round. Fadila assures Édith that this time is different. She knows it was a mistake to drop out. She won't do it again, she'll stick with it.

By the looks of it there is only one association that offers evening classes. Édith calls them up. The association has thirty years' experience. It is run by volunteers. The classes are held in the parish hall in Saint-Landry, in the ninth arrondissement. Fadila can even get there on foot.

She has the impression that that's where she began, several years ago, before she gave up, but she doesn't mind. The enrolment session will be held on Wednesday, September 7th, in the evening. During the meeting they'll divide the participants into little groups, depending on their level. Édith and Fadila will see each other again before then, and they'll discuss it again. “Inshallah,” says Fadila.

She's promises to practice while she's in Morocco. She'll go over what she's learned, a little bit every day. Édith gives her worksheets to take with her: the ten numbers, her telephone number,
FADILA AMRANI
,
RER A
,
RER B
,
RER C
—it is so little, she sees, when it's written down in black and white like this. She gives herself a shake: two or three keys don't weigh very much, either, yet they're precious.

“Maybe while you're at your cousins' someone could do some writing with you?” suggests Édith.

“I no think so.” Fadila frowns.

Perhaps at her age she really doesn't feel like putting herself in the position of the pupil among members of her family, or letting them see how difficult it is for her to make any progress.

Édith comes back to Paris at the end of August, shortly before the rest of her family. She has a job accompanying an American novelist whose books she has translated, to act as an interpreter.

Fadila has been there in her absence. There was a mountain of laundry to be ironed. “Let me know how long it took you,” Édith had told her.

As soon as she comes in she sees on the dining room table a yellow post-it which Fadila took from her pad next to the telephone: on it she has written
FADILA 4
. The
4
is a bit misshapen, it looks like a
K
, but it is clear enough.

 

They see each other two days later. Fadila is in a good mood.

“Thank you for your little note,” says Édith.

“You understand?” asks Fadila, radiant.

“Absolutely. You wrote down four hours.”

“I writing too the old lady her code.”

She explains to Édith that at number 16 on her street, where she goes three mornings a week, the electronic code to the entrance has just changed. The old lady called her two days ago to give her the new code. But she was very worried that Fadila would not be able to remember it.

“He say, you going remember? I say, I gonna writing. He say
B 24 09
and I writing.”

“Did she say
B
or
P
?” asks Édith, equally concerned.

Fadila pronounces her
P
's like
B
's; it seems to Édith that she has heard there is no
p
sound in Arabic.

Fadila picks up one of Édith's felt-tips, and takes a sheet of paper: “I making
B
my way,” she warns, writing a perfectly recognizable
B
.

She adds the four digits of the code. These she remembers. And writes in her own way; it's not that easy to tell the
2
from the
9
. But she manages.

“Did it work? Had you written the right code down?”

“Is working!”

 

She was sick in Morocco. She cannot stand the spices. “In Morocco I always getting sick.”

“And besides that? Your vacation?”

“Bah.” She raises one shoulder.

“Did things go all right with your cousin?”

The cousin, yes, but not the cousin's husband. Fadila winces. He's Algerian, and she doesn't like Algerians. “Moroccans is no liking Algerians,” she says bluntly.

“Do you still have a house in Morocco?”

“Yes! Is big house on the mountain next to Essaouira.”

“The house where you grew up?”

“Yes, is my house. But is my brother living there with his wife.”

“I thought you were an only child.”

Her father and mother had no other children, she explains graciously. But when she found herself alone in Rabat with her three children, she had to earn her living. She left the house at seven in the morning and came home at eight in the evening. Her mother came to keep house and look after the children. “I loving my mother very much; since she die is all finish with me,” she says, word for word the same formula Édith has already heard.

The two women were quite pleased with this arrangement, but someone who was not so pleased was Fadila's father, who had stayed behind on his own in the village. He ordered his wife to come back, to no avail. She didn't want to. So he took a second wife who gave him a son. It is this son whom Fadila calls her brother. He is twenty-five years younger and Fadila has never seen him. She knows he has a wife and children and that he lives in the family home. She supposes he lives the way people have always lived there, from the land.