Bitter Almonds

by Laurence Cosse

  Fadila stops by on Friday. She seems pleased about something. Before even taking off her coat she reaches into her bag for a piece of paper: “I writing the telephone number.”

  They are standing together in the dining room. Édith glances at the paper. “That’s fabulous!” she says. She knows Fadila’s phone number, 01 40 72 75 59, it’s easy to memorize. The numbers on the page are a bit wobbly but they do follow each other along a line, are all roughly the same size, and the number is almost correct. Fadila wrote 01 40 72 759. There’s only one digit missing, a 5. Was it because there are two 5’s right next to each other that Fadila only saw one where there should be two?

  “This is great,” says Édith again.

  On Fadila’s sheet, below the nine handwritten numbers, Édith copies out all ten digits of the number. She separates them into five pairs of two digits the way it is often done in France, since the numbers are broken up like that to be said, 01, 40, 72 . . .

  “I go writing at home,” says Fadila, taking her piece of paper.

  She comes back with her telephone number, clumsily written but correct. Édith regains hope. Working with numbers seems to be a less discouraging way to continue the learning process than working with letters. Fadila knows them, she should be able to write them without too much trouble.

  She’s got the zero. Time for the 1. “Watch carefully.” Before Fadila’s eyes Édith draws the 1, two strokes separated by a brief pause, first the slanted line, from left to right, then the vertical one from top to bottom. Fadila copies it without a pause. It looks like a 2: neither the slanted line nor the vertical one are straight, and the angle is not an angle. There is no obvious difference between the straight line and the curved one, between the angle and the curve.

  Time for the 2. Here as well Édith makes two strokes, first the curve, then the horizontal base. Fadila has trouble copying it. She doesn’t seem to understand what a slanted line is, or at any rate is unable to trace it. She makes a little head, then adds a vertical extension on the left: it makes a sort of reversed 9.

  On the homework sheet Édith writes 1 and 2. “Try to do a little bit every day.” She adds the zero: “This one will be child’s play for you.”

  Édith runs into Aïcha in the supermarket with one of her daughters. They look just like two sisters. Édith will tell her so the next time she sees Aïcha on her own: she’s not sure the daughter would be flattered by the comparison.

  “Have you seen,” she says, “they have a new range of generic products that are really good, price-wise.”

  Aïcha gives her an exquisite smile: “I don’t bother with the price,” she says, without the slightest vanity; on the contrary, her tone is almost apologetic.

  And yet her shopping cart is nearly full. You never see her on her own, either in the street or in her loge. Her children are grown and have moved away, for the most part, but she often has half a dozen grandchildren at her place. She’s always cooking dinner for six or eight people, she explains. If there’s too much, it doesn’t matter, what they don’t finish that evening they can eat the next day.

  Fadila always takes her homework sheet with her. She only forgot it once. She brings it back maybe one time out of three, no more. When she fails to bring it back it probably means she didn’t do the exercise—not enough time, or energy, or faith.

  But there is something that intrigues Édith. When Fadila does bring her homework, or a sheet of paper where she has written something of her own free will, she always takes that page away with her when she goes home. She never leaves it behind. Édith would have liked to keep some evidence of her work, to try and analyze both her progress and her mental blocks. But Fadila takes everything with her. Is it so that she won’t leave any trace of her awkwardness? Or, on the contrary, do those pages have a special significance for her?

  She has shown up early. “Shall we start now?” suggests Édith.

  Fadila shakes her head. “First ironing.”

  Two hours later, just when Édith is struggling with a particularly difficult paragraph, Fadila is the one who comes and sits down next to her and says, “We start?”

  On the sheet from last time, she hasn’t practiced either the 1 or the 2 or the 0, but she has written her telephone number. She did get her ten digits all in a row, but instead of writing 59 at the end she has written 99. Instead of two 5’s she has put two 9’s.

  “Do you know your number by heart? Can you say it to me?”

  “No,” says Fadila.

  When someone asks for her telephone number she gets out her little notebook, and she knows where to find it, right at the beginning.

  Édith has her copy it over. She has trouble with the 4, the 5, the 2, and the 7. The 1 is better, the 9 is fairly good.

  Édith can tell that this phone number alone will still take some doing. But just then Fadila asks her to add her own number to the sheet she is going to take home with her.

  Édith takes the opportunity to point out that the first four digits of their telephone numbers are identical, 01 40, and to remind her that with the ten basic digits they can write every single telephone number in France, Morocco, or anywhere.

  Their relationship has changed dramatically. They’ve known each other for six months, and they’ve been roped together on this climb for two months. It is obvious that Fadila no longer sees Édith in the same light. Their relationship has evolved.

  It’s not as if Fadila seems to be really suffering from the difficulty of the learning process. When she comes to sit down next to Édith to tell her that she is ready to get to work—and this does not happen every time, far from it—she is relaxed. In her entire being. She enjoys what they are doing.

  One day she brings a dish of chicken with olives she has prepared. Another time some Moroccan bread. “You heat it up,” she says.

  Édith reads on the internet that there is a great difference between those who learned to read and write and then forgot everything (illiterates) and those who never learned (analphabets). Analphabets are not ashamed of their ignorance since they are not at fault, since they were never given the opportunity to learn, unlike their illiterate brethren.

  Édith has come to quite the opposite conclusion. While Fadila seems overjoyed at the prospect of gaining admission to the world of writing (the world of learning, culture, modernity, developed countries) she is clearly ashamed of having been excluded from the world of letters, as if she had not been worthy of it (“Me I’m stupid.”).

  Fadila is ironing, the doorbell rings, and Édith goes to the door. It is Aïcha, she would like to speak with her mother. Édith is worried she might have bad news. Not at all: Aïcha just wants to have a little chat with her mother.

  They go together into the kitchen. Édith offers them some coffee and they accept, with simplicity. At this time of day both of them are supposed to be working, but clearly they seem to find it perfectly normal to take a break and have a chat. Édith goes back to work and she can hear their lively voices, speaking Arabic.

  8

  Fadila found a sheet of paper at home which she now shows to Édith. “Is my name.”

  “Which name?” asks Édith; she does not recognize the word.

  “Is Fadila!”

  She explains that she wrote it back when she had started taking an evening literacy course. This is all she has kept from that time.

  In fact, the word is illegible. The marks may look like letters, but they aren’t. It does look like handwriting of a sort, like cuneiform. Édith concludes that it must be block letters, as the children call it, capital letters.

  She tells Fadila that there is indeed another type of handwriting besides the one they have been using together from the start. They must have been learning to write in capital letters at the literacy class.

  “Was it easier for you?”

  “Yes.”

  There’s no harm in tryin
g. Édith writes FADILA on a sheet of paper and asks Fadila to copy it out. Fadila picks up the felt-tip, but she hesitates, she can’t get started.

  Just below that, Édith writes the capital letters that make up the word, spaced well apart, and she shows her their place in her name, with the A coming twice. She explains rapidly that these are the same letters as in the other sort of writing, and they are called the same, they’re just drawn differently. She already gave up a while ago on trying to distinguish the vowels from the consonants, the red letters from the green.

  Guiding her hand to begin with, Édith has Fadila write the let­ters one after the other, and then she has her do it on her own. It doesn’t seem to demand too much effort. She manages quite well with the F, the L, and the I. She can’t make a pointed A, the tip is rounded. “It doesn’t matter,” says Édith, “we can still recognize it.” The D seems to be more difficult. Fadila has a hard time with it.

  She comes again the next morning. She has written FADILA in this new handwriting, twice, and rather well, with the exception of the D which doesn’t look like anything.

  Édith has her work on the D. A vertical line, from top to bottom, and then a curve—she calls it “a belly.”

  She has her practice the A. One slanted line leaning one way, a second one leaning the other way, with a point at the top, then a little bar between the two.

  When the time comes to copy the letters, sure enough, Fadila manages quite well, except for the D.

  “Soon you’ll be able to sign your name,” says Édith. “That will be a major step.”

  “Yes, my name, and telephone number, and is all, I think.”

  “No, no. We’ll do more. When you know the names of the métro stations, you’ll be able to take it all by yourself.”

  Fadila doesn’t answer. She looks ahead, holding herself very straight: perhaps she is about to smile, or perhaps she won’t allow herself to dream.

  They spend two more sessions on FADILA. They’ve regained their momentum.

  The second time, Fadila shows up with a sheet of paper full of D’s. She has copied the letter out a hundred times or more, with the end result that she can write it very well, as Édith points out to her.

  She asks her to write FADILA from memory.

  “All alone?” asks Fadila.

  She hesitates, then she writes ADIH. “Last letter I forgetting.”

  “Not bad!” says Édith emphatically, hiding her bewilderment.

  Fadila is aware that there’s a letter missing at the end, but not at the beginning. She hasn’t registered that the A, the last letter of her name, is also the second letter, in other words that there are two A’s in her name, one in the second position and the other at the end. As for this unexpected H, where on earth did that come from? Is it some memory? Or a distortion of the A?

  Beneath ADIH, Édith writes FADILA and asks Fadila what is missing at the beginning of the word she has written. Fadila cannot figure it out on her own that it is the F, the first letter.

  Since she knows how to copy out her name from a model, Édith suggests a new exercise: she can work at home on writing it once with the model, then once without, to learn it by heart. Édith is the one who says “by heart.” Fadila says “in my head.”

  She doesn’t bring back the paper but she has been working hard, she says.

  Édith has her write FADILA “in her head” (they are creating a shared language). Fadila writes ADILHA.

  Again the initial F is missing. Which means Fadila must not identify it as the letter that carries the sound f. She doesn’t set it apart. Does this mean she’d be ill advised to start with the phonics method?

  On the other hand, given the fact she has written ADILHA, does this mean that the whole language method suits her better? She has the right number of letters, even if the F is missing and the H shouldn’t be there—this mysterious H.

  Every day on television there are reports about sub-Saharan clandestine emigrants, young black men who volunteer to pass through Morocco in their effort to reach the Canary Islands by sea. They pay smugglers and set sail on leaky tubs, at night, risking their lives. The number of shipwrecks has increased because the network is doing well: there have been more and more attempts. Reporters tell stories of distraught survivors, and candidates for departure await their turn, hidden just behind the shore. Planned itineraries have been reconstructed. Those who stayed behind are interrogated: the families, the mothers in the villages they abandoned.

  Fadila has neither compassion nor even indulgence for these people who are prepared to risk everything. “People say is poverty, but is not poverty. In the village there is bread. That guy drown, he do better had stayed in the village. But people they no want just eating, they want big car, big house, all that.” When she was a child, she says, no one in her village had a car, or a television, or a telephone. People had food on the table, nothing more, but they didn’t think about crossing the sea.

  9

  Early one afternoon Édith comes home to find Fadila outside her door on the sidewalk, extremely irritated. She was meant to meet her daughter at two o’clock and the door was locked, Aïcha was not at home. Édith suggests they call her on her cell phone, assuming Fadila has a cell phone; she does indeed but—the usual problem—Fadila does not know how to find Aïcha’s number in her little notebook.

  “Aïcha not keeping her word,” she grumbles.

  Édith points out that Aïcha is not the only one who doesn’t respect the time. They have already discussed it; it is the only cause of friction between them and, after all, if Fadila finds it difficult to put up with people who fail to show up, perhaps she might be prepared to see that other people find it irritating, too.

  Édith fully expects Fadila to put her in her place, but she doesn’t: “Is true,” says Fadila, “is problem with Moroccans, they no keep their word.”

  She adds that perhaps Aïcha’s daughter called her, as she is about to have her baby. But since she is already there, she’ll come up and do the ironing, she says to Édith, without asking her whether it’s a suitable time or not.

  Édith is afraid that Fadila will be too annoyed now to want to work on her reading. Nevertheless, she suggests that they start with that, and Fadila accepts.

  They go over the numbers, it’s a good day for telephone numbers: Fadila’s, Édith’s. Fadila can identify her own number without hesitation.

  “How do you recognize it?” asks Édith.

  Fadila can’t explain. She doesn’t point to any given number that she can recognize in particular. “I just knowing, is all.”

  But she does not know her number so well that she can write it on her own.

  Experts are unanimous in affirming that writing is reading. Writing the digits helps to learn them. Fadila is stumbling over the 2 and the 9, which look very similar the way she draws them. Édith repeats that it is vital always to draw the numbers the same way. Fadila looks at her skeptically, as if to say, that really does complicate things unnecessarily.

  Fadila arrives late, and Édith is on her way out. They make an appointment for six o’clock, to read for a moment. Édith gets back just in time, in a rush, but in the entrance to the building she runs into Fadila on her way out. Her son’s in-laws are in Pantin, they’ve come to see their daughter, she has to go and say hello to them, she’s in a hurry. They’ll do their reading “s’m’other time.”

  “Well, has she had her baby?”

  No, says Fadila, but they’ve kept her granddaughter at the clinic. It’s better that way, there won’t be any problems. “Clinic is expensive but is better. Me, when my daughter is born I no speaking for one month.”

  Édith cannot see what that has to do with it. Fadila explains that she screamed so much during the three days it took her to give birth that she lost her voice for an entire month. It was her first birth, she was fifteen years old. No, she didn’
t have a midwife, only women who’d already had children, but they wouldn’t have been able to do anything if there’d been a complication. “They hang this thing, up there, so I holding,” she says, raising her arms and squeezing her hands as if around a rope. “After three days I no feeling nothing.” She holds out the palms of her hands to Édith.

  Édith recalls that Fadila was an only child, and she loved her mother very much.

  “Was it your mother who married you off so young?”

  “No, is my father!” exclaims Fadila.

  She was married at the age of fourteen to a man she did not know, a young fellow, a good-for-nothing. There was something blocking him, she says, pointing to her upper back. When the time came to harvest the wheat or work the fields, her own father had to go and do it.

  “You lived near your parents?”

  “No, is far, very far.”

  “Was he kind, your husband?”

  She makes a face: “No, he no kind. I running all the time.”

  Édith asks her to repeat what she has said. She used to run away, every evening. She would hide in the countryside. She would rather spend the night out of doors.

  Then they took her back to her husband. And she would run away again.

  “Were you happy to have a baby?”

  She raises her eyes to the ceiling: “Happy?” It is her turn not to understand. “I no happy, I knowing nothing about babies.”

  Her mother took the child in. It was Aïcha.

  A few months later Fadila ran away for good. She hitchhiked, she says. She went back to her parents. Her father was furious but her husband behaved decently, he said that if Fadila did not want to live with him anymore, he would not force her.

  He let her have the baby because it was a girl. She gives a little laugh. If it had been a boy, of course he would have kept it.