Bitter Almonds (3 page)

“This is the letter
a
,” she says, pointing to the
a.
“Look, in
fadila
you have the letter
a
twice, and if you listen carefully, you can hear it twice, too, Fa-di-la.”

She has a red felt-tip at the ready, in addition to the black pen she used to write the five vowels and the name
fadila
on the sheet of paper. She underlines the
a
in Fadila's name, twice, in red. “Here you have the letter
a,
twice: here, and here.” Then she writes in red, below the name and just below each
a,
a new separate
a
.

“Do you remember the name of this letter?”

Silence.

“It's
a
.”

“
A
,” echoes Fadila.

“Your turn to write it.”

On a second sheet of paper Édith writes the letter
a
on its own, in big letters. She deconstructs the gesture: “You start with a circle, like for an
o
. Then you draw a line down the side, like this. See?”

She writes
a
several times on a line, slowly.

“Your turn,” she says, putting down the felt-tip. “Go ahead.”

Fadila picks up the pen with all five fingers of her right hand. She holds it vertically, perpendicular to the white sheet.

“Go ahead,” says Édith, encouraging her. “Make an
a.
”

Fadila places the pen on the sheet without supporting herself with the side of her hand or her forearm. She moves the point around for a moment, traces the fragment of a curve, then gives up.

“I'll do it with you,” says Édith, taking Fadila's hand in her own.

She is troubled somewhat by this contact of warm skin, by the gesture and her own maternal side. It must seem strange to Fadila, too, she thinks.

Together they draw a perfectly recognizable
a
. And then another. And another.

“You see? You start from the top, make your circle, always in the same direction. Like this. Then the line on the right.”

But when it's Fadila's turn, she moves the pen forward, then back again. And puts it down.

She must not know what a circle is, thinks Édith, or a line, or what I mean by on the right.

“We'll stop there for now.” It is clear she mustn't insist. “You'll practice at home, all right?”

“All right,” says Fadila.

She seems pleased. But is it with the idea of working at home, or because they've stopped?

Édith gives her the main sheet, with
fadila
, the red
a
's, and the vowels all in a line.

“This is your model,” she explains. “Study it carefully. And then write here on the second sheet. To start with, make the
o
, the letter that's like a zero. See, they're circles, it's easy.”

As she is speaking, Édith writes three big, identical
o
's at the beginning of the three lines, at the top of the page. “Write them here, side by side.” She shows her how, following the three lines with her finger. “After that you can try the
a.
”

In the lower half of the page she writes three
a
's, at the beginning of three lines also one after the other. “Remember, first the circle, then the line, like this.”

She hands the two sheets of paper to Fadila, then a few other blank ones, and the black felt-tip. Fadila takes the sheets and puts them in her bag. She leaves the pen on the table: “I have at home.”

“It's a pity to wait a whole week before continuing,” says Édith. “When will you be back on this street?”

Fadila works three mornings a week for an old lady at number 16, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. She can stop by Édith's tomorrow, Wednesday, at noon.

“Perfect,” says Édith, writing it down in her diary. She sees she will have to delay a lunch engagement.

 

The sheet that Fadila brings to her the next day at half past twelve is one of the most moving documents Édith has seen in a long time. Fadila did not fill in the lines they had started with
a
and
o,
but wrote on one of the blank sheets. Was it her intention to do a sort of draft? Or did she not understand what Édith had asked of her? She brought only this sheet. In one corner, at the bottom to the right (or, it could be the upper left), there is a little pile of signs crammed close together, untidy scratchings where it is impossible to recognize either an
a
or an
o,
or any other letter for that matter.

Fadila's school age, clearly, is not four, but two. She doesn't know what a line is, nor how to go from left to right. She cannot distinguish a curve from a straight line. She cannot conceive that letters have to be identical yet separate, with equal spaces in between. Perhaps she has never done any drawing, either.

French children, when they learn how to read at the age of five or six, have three or four years of pre-school instruction behind them where they spend hours with pencils in their hands—drawing, connecting dots, learning directions, making lines and circles and dashes, always the same size, always on a horizontal line, always from left to right and top to bottom.

Fadila is in a hurry, she cannot stay. She has taken off her coat but not her black headscarf. Édith holds her back: “Just a minute. When you write there's a way to hold your pen that makes it easier.”

She shows Fadila how to squeeze the pen between her thumb, forefinger and middle finger while placing her hand right on the paper. She has her curl her fingers then slips the pen between them. Fadila is tense, her fingers are stiff. She cannot find the position on her own.

“It will come,” says Édith. “Let me quickly make another sheet with the
o
for you
.
”

This time she writes several
o
's on three lines.

“That one's like zero,” says Fadila.

“Exactly. See: do a few of them on the same line, like this. Keep going in this direction, to the right, here and then here and then here. Understand?”

Of course Fadila understands. But she has to go. She takes the paper with her.

“Will you come again on Friday at noon?”

“Inshallah,” says Fadila.

 

On Friday Édith waits for Fadila in vain. She calls her that evening: “Will you come on Monday?”

“Yes,” says Fadila, “but if I no coming Monday it no matter, I coming Tuesday.”

On Monday Fadila fails to show. Édith expected as much; she doesn't call her.
On Tuesday Fadila arrives on time. “I no writing, no time,” she says, the moment she takes off her coat. “I going shower, sleeping at my son.”

Édith immediately feels an urge to play down the importance of things, that same urge she used to feel when one of her sons, when they were little, would come home with a bad grade, his eyes filled with fear. “Don't worry, it doesn't matter, we'll write together. Sit down.”

Fadila doesn't say anything about wanting to postpone the lesson until late afternoon. Édith sees this as a good sign.

She writes a big
o
and says to Fadila, “Your turn.” Fadila tries. She struggles. Édith takes her hand and they draw the
o
together.

“Your turn,” says Édith again.

Fadila manages a stunted
o
.

“There you are. Go on. Make a few.”

Fadila draws a few very uneven
o
's. Some of them look like an
o
, others don't.

“I can't,” she says.

“Yes you can,” Édith says encouragingly.

Fadila never draws her
o
's twice in the same direction. Édith repeats that she has to start at the top then go from left to right, curving the line by moving the pen in a counter-clockwise direction: always the same gesture, always the same direction. Fadila does not seem to see the point in doing something so repetitive.

Édith draws an
o
perfectly wedged between its two lines, and she insists upon the spot where she started. An inch further to the right she marks another spot on the upper line. “Start there. Go ahead.” She shows the direction of the circle to be drawn.

Fadila manages fairly well this time.

On a blank sheet Édith prepares a line with a finished
o
at the beginning and then a dozen or so little dots for starting all the other
o
's. “This is for you to do at home. Now let's look at the
a
again.”

She has decided that Fadila must learn to read the letter
a
first before trying to write it. She wonders if reading might not be easier than writing. The experts say that the two must be learned together, that one feeds the other, but to Édith it seems clear that Fadila's eye is more used to reading than her hand is to writing.

She opens the textbook to the first page, shows her a first
a
, then another, then she asks her if she sees any more
a
's. Fadila finds a few. She also points to letters that are not
a
's, like an
o
, a
u
, and an
n.
But on the sheet in front of her, where Édith writes
fadila,
she gets it right: she finds the two
a
's.

“Good,” says Édith. “Now, to do the
a
, remember, first you make an
o
, then you add a little line on the right-hand side.”

As she speaks she draws an
a
at the beginning of a line halfway down the homework sheet. She thickens the dot where she started the line, just as she had done with the
o
, and on the same line she sets out a dozen little starting points.

“Shall we continue?” she asks. “Do you want to?”

“Go on,” says Fadila, cheerfully.

“Let's try a new letter.”

Another vowel, the
i:
the
i
in
fadila
, the
i
they see here and there in the textbook. Édith points out the fact that this letter is the only one on the page that has a little dot above it.

“You see them, the
i
's? Show me a few.”

Fadila shows her an
o
, an
e
, it doesn't seem to matter to her. Édith insists on the dot which makes the
i
completely different from all the other letters. But she has to admit that Fadila does not seem to see the dot.

She cannot tell the
i
apart from the other letters. Clearly there is nothing distinctive about a dot above a letter. As for “above,” it's as if Fadila hadn't a clue what she meant by it.

 

And yet she seems to have a perfect grasp of the notions of above and under. Édith searches her memory, trying to figure out what is going on. Fadila knows what
above
means (“Once you've ironed the shirts, put them there on top of the washing machine”) and
under
(“The screws must have fallen under the table, I'll have a look”). Why can't Fadila see what a dot above an
i
means?

One morning when they were both working in the dining room and Édith could see Fadila next to her, frowning, her eyes on her paper, she had a sudden hunch what the problem might be. On a sheet of paper placed on a table, which in turn is pushed against a wall, Édith's written word,
above
(“It's the only letter with a dot on top of it”), designates the direction of the wall, whereas
under
would designate the two women. Up and down, on paper, are abstract representations. Fadila knows up and down in real space. She can distinguish perfectly between things that are on the table and those that are under the table. She can also distinguish between what is on the paper (the pen on the paper) and what is underneath (the wooden surface of the table). No doubt if it were on a blackboard she would understand “The dot is on top of the
i.
”

From there to distinguishing what is on top of an
i
or below a line on a horizontal piece of paper there is an abyss: the abyss that separates reality from representation, the habitual use of space where one moves around, from a total ignorance of its abstract representation. Fadila may speak several languages, but she does not know how they are represented.

 

She stops by that Friday, without any advance notice.

“I writing,” she said at once.

Fadila takes off her coat, keeps her black headscarf, goes to sit at the dining room table, takes a handful of papers out of her big bag, and finds the sheet with her assignment to copy the
o
's and the
a
's. She has drawn a few
o
's, more or less correctly wedged between the two lines, but not connected to the dots that were supposed to indicate their starting point. She hasn't written a single
a.

“Very good,” says Édith. “You're starting to get it. Shall we do some reading?”

Édith writes
o
's,
a
's, and
i
's on a sheet, all on the same line, alternating, and pointing first to one letter then another she asks Fadila to identify them. Fadila manages once in three or four tries.

After that, the same exercise in the textbook, still on the first page. Édith has drastically curtailed her program (they started two weeks ago already), but she won't let anyone imply that she has curtailed her ambition. On the contrary, she has the impression she has embarked on an extremely ambitious undertaking, which is not at all what she thought she was getting into.

It turns out that reading is indeed less laborious than writing. Édith does not exclude the possibility that it will be easier for her to make Fadila read than to get her to write. It's not that Fadila is more at ease with reading, if anything she is less so, but it goes faster. Failure is fleeting, they can quickly move on to something else.