“You’re a Berber, aren’t you?” asks Édith. She is cross with herself for not having thought of it sooner. And yet she knows very well that the majority of the population in Morocco are Berbers.
Fadila’s face lights up.
“You know what is Berber?”
“What do you think! With your children do you speak Arabic or Berber?”
“Arabic. Is they is wanting. But is understanding Berber.”
They work on capital letters, F, D, and A. Fadila makes a curved A that leans to the right. She bursts out laughing: “Is like banana!” Édith has never seen Fadila laugh so much as at moments like this during the lesson, which to Édith seem so very laborious.
There are days when Fadila is tired, or in a hurry, and so she has not had the time to go over what they studied during the previous lesson. She isn’t in the mood to read or write.
Other days it is Édith who isn’t at home when Fadila comes by. So there is no lesson.
Then things happen unexpectedly. “A lady she coming my house, I making dinner. After she stay is sleeping. He speaking, speaking. Is making me too tired. Is pissing me off, that woman!”
“So by now the baby must be born, no?”
“Yes, is little girl, Betty.”
“They called her Betty?”
“No! Is name Camélia.”
Édith thought she had heard Betty, in fact Fadila said pretty.
“Is Christian name, Camélia?” asks Fadila.
Not a Christian name, no, but quite common, now. Édith explains the fashion of naming girls after flowers or fruit.
Camélia rings a bell with Fadila. “You knowing, one princess she dying . . . Camélia is old woman!”
Édith doesn’t get it. A princess . . . “Diana?” she asks.
“Yes!”
It dawns on her: Camilla. The old woman.
“No,” says Édith, “Camélia is not the same as Camilla. They’re two different names.”
She repeats the names, accentuating the differences.
“And is little animal, walking like this . . . Is little green . . .” With her fingertips Fadila imitates a little scampering creature.
Once again it takes Édith a few seconds to grasp what she means. “A chameleon! No, that’s not the same word, either.”
Camélia, Camilla, chameleon: to an ear used to Arabic dialects and the rarity of vowels, it must sound almost identical. Even the name Fadila can be written differently in French: sometimes it’s Fadela, sometimes Fedla.
10
Summer has come, splendid. It is suddenly very hot.
“What lovely weather!” says Édith when she sees Fadila coming in.
“Is horrible,” grumbles Fadila, tensely. “I no liking sun.”
She vanishes for a moment, then comes back: “Monsieur he not here?”
“No, why?”
“I taking off skirt.”
She is in her panties underneath her AP-HP overall, buttoned down to the hem; panties that go down below the knee and which in France are called corsaire, or breeches.
“Sun is horrible,” she says again.
“But it must be cooler here than in Morocco,” says Édith tentatively. “The women there must suffocate in their long robes.”
Fadila assures her that they don’t, that you suffer less from the heat in Morocco than in Paris, “even with dress is this long and veil, too. I never getting hot there.”
“But when you were young, you didn’t wear a veil,” says Édith who, like everyone, has read that the veil has become more prevalent only recently with Islamic fundamentalism.
“Yes,” says Fadila, “like this.”
She hides her face with a corner of her white headscarf, leaving only her eyes visible. “But I not getting hot.”
“I thought that girls weren’t veiled in Morocco back then.”
“No, I always wearing veil. Is now is finish. Because of internet and all that. I no like it. People they say everyone do what they wanting. I no agree.”
She opens wide all the windows in the apartment. Édith doesn’t like the idea, since it is warmer outside than in. She prefers the Provençal method which is to have all the windows resting on the catch and the blinds lowered. “At least in the room where I’m working,” she pleads.
“You doing what you want in your house,” says Fadila, furious, turning on her heels.
She leaves earlier than usual. Édith doesn’t mention reading. It would only give Fadila an opportunity to tell her to get lost, and their lessons along with it.
As she comes out of the kitchen where she went for a drink of water, she stops next to Édith and points to the books open on the table, the little computer, the draft copies, and asks, “What is work you doing?”
Édith explains that she is a translator. She translates from English—novels, to be exact. No sooner has she said the word than she is sorry: Fadila is bound to know the difference between the Koran and all the other books, but probably not between novels and other genres.
While she’s at it, she tells her she also works as an interpreter. “That’s why there are days when I’m not at home.”
The following week when Fadila walks by the table, she says to Édith that books are finished. There are too many of them. Before, it used to be good business, you could earn money with books. Not anymore. “Before is not so many people they writing books, now is many.”
It was a lady who told her this. “A lady I working her place.”
As she speaks she rolls her sleeves up above her elbows and for the first time Édith sees the very deep scar she has on the inside of her right arm, at least eight inches long.
She was locked in, she broke a window pane to get out, and cut her forearm, she says, with no further explanation, then abruptly raises her chin.
Édith runs into Aïcha in the street, a festive fiftysomething, a grandmother in jeans. She congratulates her on the birth of her granddaughter. “A girl is better than nothing,” concedes Aïcha graciously.
They are standing in line together at the boulangerie. Édith brings up what Fadila told her about her marriage.
“She was fourteen . . .”
“It was rape,” says Aïcha, not beating around the bush. “She used to do the laundry at night, did she tell you that? She was so afraid to go to bed with her husband that she began to do the laundry, when really it was time to go to bed. He called to her from the bedroom, shouting all through the house. She would say, I’m coming, but first I have to hang up the washing. She went up on the terrace and was as slow about it as she could be, hoping he’d fall asleep in the meantime.”
She shrugs: “I don’t know why she goes around saying she doesn’t know how old she is. She had me when she was fifteen. I’m fifty, she can just count on her fingers.”
Even at the end of the afternoon it is hot. They drink some orange juice in the kitchen then move into the dining room and sit down to work. Édith says, “Can you write your name for me in your head?” and Fadila complies, without any mistakes.
Édith is exultant and claps her hands.
“Is no important,” says Fadila.
“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, mo
re 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.
11
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.
12
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.
Bitter Almonds Page 5