Bitter Almonds (8 page)

Fadila's mother was first to die, a long time ago, then her father, whom neither she nor her mother ever saw again, and finally her father's second wife.

For Édith, Fadila's story had left off when she was fifteen, living with her parents in the village, at the moment of Aïcha's birth. She did not know that Fadila had gone on to live and work, on her own with her children, in Rabat.

“You were married twice?”

“Three times.” Fadila lifts three fingers of her right hand. “All three husbands is bad husbands,” she adds. “Enough, I got to do ironing. You listening, I talking all the time, I has ironing, after all!”

 

“Don't forget that next Wednesday evening, the 7th, is the day to enroll at the association.”

“Yes, of course, I remembering.”

“If you like, I can go to the meeting with you.”

“Is nice of you. Okay.”

Édith would like to find out which type of writing they use with their beginners, and to tell the instructor that Fadila is more at ease with capital letters than with cursive handwriting. She's afraid the class might use cursive.

“It would be good if we did some work beforehand.”

“Have to!” says Fadila. “If I enrolling next week . . .”

She goes to fetch her bag from where she left it in the hallway.

“Is no gonna be easy,” she continues. But she does not seem to be particularly worried, her tone is the same as when she finishes a sentence referring to the future with “inshallah.”

She takes a piece of paper from her shopping bag. On it she has written
FADILA AMRANI
twenty or more times, flawlessly, in a column.

Édith wasn't expecting this. “You've been working hard!”

“Is okay, I know my name,” Fadila says forcefully. “Let's doing something else.”

This is the first time she has asserted that something has been learned and it is time to move on.

She is sitting at her usual place at the dining room table. She's not in a hurry today. Édith sits down in turn, places a few pieces of paper between them and asks her to write her first name from memory. Fadila does it without making any mistakes, first time round.

“Perfect. Now your last name, Amrani.”

Fadila's hand hovers in the air.

“Begin with
AM
,” says Édith, “
A
, then
M
.”

Fadila writes
M
.

“That's a good
M
, but to write
AM
, remember, you need one other letter, too . . .”

“Yes,” says Fadila, “the letter there and there.”

Fadila points with her fingertip to the two
A
's in Fadila. She writes an
A
, not before the
M
but after.

Next to this
MA
, Édith writes
AM
, explains that
MA
is pronounced
ma
and is not the same thing as
AM
, which is pronounced
am
.

She writes
AMRANI
and asks Fadila to copy her name. Fadila writes
MRANI
. “There's a letter missing,” Édith says. Fadila cannot see which one is missing.

Enough difficulty for now. Édith says again, “Your name begins with
A
, you know the
A
,” and at the same time she adds it to
MRANI
, where it belongs, at the beginning.

Fadila has trouble doing the same. She doesn't know how to reconstruct a word. Édith cannot figure out why.

“In any event”—she is speaking to herself as much as to Fadila—“you've got your first name, you know how to write it now.”

She writes first and last name on a sheet of paper and asks Fadila to copy them out at home, first from the model, then on another sheet of paper on her own.

Fadila takes the papers and gets up, telling Édith all the while that the night before, her son called her on the phone, and she knew it was him before she picked up because his name was displayed on the little screen. “Is called Nasser,” she says, “But is name is Larbit. I seeing Larbit.”

“Like this?” asks Édith, hastily writing
LARBIT
.

“Yes. 'Xactly like that.”

“That's great!” says Édith.

This time, she explains, Fadila has read a word that she learned to recognize all on her own. One day soon she will be able to read other words she's learned on her own. And from then on she will know how to read. She's getting there.

 

Édith calls the Association Saint-Landry to make sure that the enrollment session is still scheduled for the 7th in the evening. One of the organizers has taken her call; he asks her a few questions about Fadila, then sounds exasperated when he finds out how old she is. He warns Édith that there will be a lot of people on the 7th, and they won't be able to take everyone. Given how hard it is for older people to learn to read and write, and how disappointing the results can be, the younger students will have priority.

“Obviously,” says the man, “we don't know yet how old the participants will be, and whether your protégée will be one of the oldest or not. No point upsetting her; don't say anything to her about it.”

*

Fadila brings back the paper where she was supposed to copy out her first and last name. Underneath
FADILA AMRANI
she has written

 

FADNI

FADIANI

AMAILA

AMRIL

 

Four words using the letters from her first and last name, but in fact she was supposed to copy them from the model.

As cheerfully as possible Édith says, “You haven't got everything, there are bits missing. You're doing great on your capital letters now.”

She does not dare ask who wrote the flawless column of names Fadila has brought back with her from Morocco. She hides the sheet where first and last name have been scrunched together so dishearteningly, and writes Fadila's name out again on a clean sheet. “Your turn now,” she says. “Look at it carefully and copy it out, the whole thing. Don't leave anything out!”

Fadila laughs. She writes
FADIAAMRANI
.

Édith draws a line between the two
A
's in the middle. Underneath she rewrites the first and last names, carefully separated by a space, and she points to the space. “Words mustn't be stuck together in French, remember? Go on, write the two words again, each one separately.”

Fadila writes
FADILA MRANI
with a tiny space between the two.

Édith shows her that there is a letter missing from the beginning of the name. “Oh, right, is missing,” says Fadila, and she writes an
A
in the little space she had left between first and last names, effectively joining them together.

 

The enrollment session at the association is for tomorrow evening at eight
p.m.

“Do you want to meet there?” asks Édith.

Fadila suggests, rather, that Édith come by her place at the end of the day, at around seven, and they will go together to the rue Saint-Landry.

Stairway B, is other side courtyard,” Fadila told her. “You taking elevator all the way to sixth floor. Is first room.”

The courtyard is long, expansive, and calm, with three trees planted in a row. The building at the end is solid, and the sixth floor is light and well maintained. But Fadila's room is tiny. Inhuman—the word immediately springs to mind. It must be six feet wide by eight feet long, and the ceiling is no higher than six feet either. It has everything—a bed, sink, fridge, hot plate, microwave, and television, and a few stacking boxes for storage. The passage between the bed and the furniture, leading from the door to the window opposite, is so narrow that two people cannot pass each other. The window may well look out onto the sky, and when you draw closer there is a view of rooftops as far as the eye can see, but it is no wonder that Fadila has panic attacks living in such cramped quarters. It would be abnormal if she didn't. At a push you can sleep in such a confined space, but you cannot stand up in there, you cannot live. In a place like this a television is so much more than mere distraction: it becomes an opening onto the world in the most physical way, a vital source of space and air.

Fadila has made some tea—she has noticed that Édith drinks tea all the time—to go with some almonds and a store-bought pound cake. She hands two slices to Édith straight off and says, “Is very good. I'm eating every morning for breakfast.”

She adds, “I having nothing, no money, room is small, I no telling nobody I have big house or money. I telling the truth.”

Her honesty clearly played a role in her son's marriage, she explains. One day, it must have been—she stops to think—five years ago, they were walking down the street together in Clichy, where Nasser was living at the time. They walked past a middle-aged Moroccan couple with their daughter. Fadila took an immediate liking to the young woman, and said as much to her son. Nasser agreed. Shall I say something to them? suggested Fadila. Nasser nodded.

She turned around and went up to the threesome. She introduced herself and her son. They had a chat, and Fadila invited the parents and their daughter to have dinner at her place the following Saturday.

“I do it on purpose,” she says. On purpose, to have them come up to her little room without delay, to show them that her only wealth is her energy and her dignity.

The dinner was a success (it is beyond Édith how five people could share a meal in that room). The two young people hit it off. Three months later they were married. The young woman was a secretary in Morocco, and her parents had a bit of property. They are fond of Nasser. They had a proper wedding. “In the church in Clichy,” says Fadila, and before Édith can comment on the word church, she adds, “Is nice room in Clichy
mairie
, is very good for weddings.”

She stands up and reaches for a large photograph in a cardboard frame next to the television. A radiant young woman in a white dress on the arm of a slim, slightly awkward young man.

“By the way,” says Édith, “you told me you put the card with your name on it next to the television, but I don't see it.”

“I put, is here.”

Fadila picks up the card, which was indeed next to the television but face down, along with a small pile of papers which Édith recognizes as the letters and words they have worked on together.

“You would see it better if you stood it up,” says Édith, indicating a vertical plane with her right hand.

“Yes, is like children at school . . .”

“Children and grown-ups. If you see something every day, you end up remembering it.”

Fadila stands the card against the side of the television. She has manners. The guest is always right.

But it is time to set off for Saint-Landry. They need at least ten minutes to get there on foot, and it would be better to be on time.

 

As they cross the courtyard, Édith observes how pleasant it is with the three trees. Fadila agrees. She sits down here whenever she can—she points to a stone bench next to the wall separating the courtyard from the neighboring apartments. Édith doesn't say anything, but all she can think of is the way Fadila comes down to this courtyard for fresh air when she is stifling at night. She must sit on this little bench in the dark.

Along the way, Fadila shows Édith around her neighborhood. She's been living in this arrondissement for eleven years. She points out the grocery shops, the Laundromat where she has her washing done by the kilo, the shops: “Is for children but is expensive”; “They has so nice shoes.”

“It's a pleasant part of town,” says Édith, who doesn't know this arrondissement very well.

“Yes, is only rich people. Is very calm and quiet.”

 

They are not late on arriving in Saint-Landry but other candidates have come early, so Fadila is given the number 30. Gentlemen who look like retired seniors have everyone go and sit in a large room in the basement in rows of plastic chairs. Facing them are six wooden tables, against the wall.

It was here that Fadila tried years ago to learn to read. But the classes were held elsewhere, in a much smaller room. And the people Fadila had met back then are not here this evening.

The meeting is late getting started. The candidates continue to pour in. Everyone is chatting, although from time to time a woman with a chignon, wearing a straight plaid skirt, asks for silence. Édith notices worriedly that most of the candidates are young Filipino women, plus a dozen or so Moroccans of both sexes (“They is Moroccan,” said Fadila), three black Africans, and a few Asians.

More candidates arrive and some benches are brought out. Then a group of young people who look like students come in: they must be the volunteer instructors.

And indeed they go and sit at the tables, facing the candidates. “Let's get started,” says one of the older men in a loud voice.

The woman in the chignon knows what to expect from the Filipinos' level of language: she calls out the numbers in English, “Two! Sree!” in a caricature of an accent, until one of the Moroccans says, “Speak French, Madame!” As their numbers are called, the participants go to sit at one of the tables with a volunteer who helps them to fill out a form.

Fadila knows a few of the Moroccans. She points to one of the men in the group, in his forties, sitting next to a brown-haired woman. “Is not his wife,” says Fadila, furious. His wife stayed behind in Morocco with the children, and now this is how he behaves, while the wife has to bring up the children all on her own, in addition to the housework.

“Is hard, children, when you is all alone.”

“At least, thanks to the father, there's some money in the family,” says Édith.

“Money is not everything,” retorts Fadila, with one of those idiomatic expressions she uses from time to time.