Bitter Almonds

by Laurence Cosse

  The experts are unanimous in affirming that it is easier to learn something when it is obvious that it will be useful: Édith continues to work on Fadila’s mailing address.

  She asks Fadila for another envelope with her name on it. With the pencil she underlines Madame Fadila Amrani:

  “These three words you already know. Let’s look at what comes next.”

  She points to the address, on its line, 62 rue de Laborde, 75008 Paris, and she explains each element of the address in turn, writing RUE in large letters for Fadila.

  “You’ve known the R for a long time now, you have it in RER, both here and here. The E is the letter in the middle of RER. We saw U not long ago, and you managed to write it right away. This little word, RUE, is on nearly every envelope, you’ll see.”

  The day’s mail is on the table. Édith takes three envelopes addressed to her and shows the word to Fadila on each of them.

  Fadila writes it very well, right from the start.

  “I already know is recognizing name on my letters,” she says.

  Since she seems to be fairly cheerful this evening, before she leaves Édith asks her to write her first and last name from memory. She writes ADIRA AMRNNI.

  Édith corrects her and asks her to start over. Fadila writes AFDILA AMRLANI.

  Fleetingly Édith wonders how many different combinations one can obtain from the letters that go to make up Fadila Amrani.

  “Today is catastrophe,” says Fadila.

  There are a dozen or more Christmas cards on the dresser in the entrance. “Is everyone they writing you like this?” she asks.

  “To my family and me, yes. People wishing us a happy new year.”

  “To me no one is writing. Not one person.”

  Perhaps that is because Muslim new year does not come at the same time, mumbles Édith. Fadila doesn’t understand: “Is new year, is same for everyone. For us is same. New year day is new year day.”

  Edith’s boys are sad to see how bitter Fadila is, so they send her very affectionate wishes, on a card featuring some Iznik pottery. Édith and Gilles also sign the card.

  A few days later Fadila shows up, very moved, with a pile of letters that she thrusts into Édith’s hands. In the pile is their Christmas card.

  “Ah, you got it.”

  “Yes, I go asking Madame Aubin, is tell me is very nice.”

  But that is not what she wanted to show Édith: in the pile there is a letter from Free telling her to pay for the freebox subscription which she had already cancelled several weeks earlier. Once Édith had heard about the cancellation she told Fadila not to send any money to Free anymore. And Fadila’s daughter-in-law had also written to the carrier in response to a bill that came after the cancellation, to remind them that she had cancelled the subscription.

  The letter from Free that Fadila has brought is not an order to pay, as she feared, but an answer to her daughter-in-law’s letter: the carrier is asking for all the references, name and address of the subscriber, contract number, and so on.

  Édith sums up the letter for Fadila, who bursts into tears. She tries to console her, saying, “It’s nothing serious, we’ll give them their references,” but to no avail. Fadila weeps like someone who is at the end of her rope, who does not know how to defend herself, who is afraid she will have to pay something, yet again.

  She wipes her eyes, raises her chin: “I showing letter to Nasser, is giving me back like this (an abrupt gesture), is saying no have time. He supposed to explaining me like you. Is my son! Why he saying he no has time?”

  21

  Édith has added the word RUE to their treasure chest. She shows Fadila how the list is getting longer, and she has her read a few of the words she knows. She asks her to take her time before speaking, to take a very good look first.

  Fadila recognizes RUE (or almost: she says, “Is the street.”) She reads NASSER, LARBIT, and AÏCHA correctly.

  She can copy out RUE DE LABORDE without any difficulty. But when it comes to writing her full name from memory, she warns Édith that she can’t do it anymore, she used to know but now it’s gone. She writes FADIA AMRLANI.

  Progress in reading, regression in writing: Édith finds it hard to understand. But she doesn’t say anything. She draws a long rectangle on a sheet of paper, and inside it she writes:

  MADAME FADILA AMRANI

  RUE DE LABORDE

  “Your street number, what was it again?”

  “62.”

  “Go ahead, write it down.”

  She does not ask Fadila where she should put the number, she knows that it won’t be obvious her, and she doesn’t want to give her a trick question. She points to the spot and Fadila writes 62, with a well-made 6 and a backwards 2.

  A building in Mecca has collapsed, killing seventy pilgrims. Two days later, two hundred and fifty people die suffocated in a stampede of the kind which occur regularly around the Black Stone.

  “You seeing what is happen in Mecca?” asks Fadila gravely.

  “I saw, yes,” says Édith.

  Fadila, in a different tone, says resentfully, “Is some people they going Mecca four-five times!”

  Édith cannot see what is wrong with that. Fadila explains, furious: “Is Koran saying must going Mecca one time. You think is normal is going Mecca four-five times instead to give money to people who no have money?”

  Fadila needs a statement of what she was paid the previous year. There is a huge mess in Gilles’ filing cabinet. Édith cannot find the papers she needs.

  “My husband is a good man,” she says, “but putting things away is not his thing.”

  After a pause, Fadila adds, “Is all men they the same.”

  “No, not all of them. I assure you.”

  “Is men they no making effort putting things away,” insists Fadila. “Is no trying, ever.”

  “Can you write something besides your name, all on your own? RER, for example? Or LARBIT, which you see on your phone a lot?”

  “No,” says Fadila.

  Perhaps reading does not make her as anxious. Fadila can more or less make out RER A, RER B, and RER C. Édith reminds her that A, B, and C are the first three letters of the alphabet. She opens the manual and asks Fadila to find them. “At the top,” she says.

  She would like Fadila to identify a few letters at last, particularly the initial letters of words. She shows her on their treasure chest list how A is found at the beginning of AMRANI and AÏCHA, but nowhere else; how LARBIT and LAUNDRY both begin with an L, and MADAME and ME both begin with M. It is a tool for telling words apart, easy to use.

  She gets the impression that Fadila understands the principle, but does not have the means to put it into practice. While she may know these few letters, she does not know them well enough to say their names or even the sound they make.

  With the numbers there has been some progress—at least insofar as reading them is concerned. Fadila can read as far as 34. After that—go figure—she hesitates.

  Édith congratulates her. Fadila tells her that she has been trying on her own lately. Trusting herself enough to read the price on items in the shops. “Before, in shop, I always asking other people. Now is no more asking.”

  Édith apologizes, this Tuesday she can hardly speak. She can’t even smile. She has spent the morning at the dentist’s, she’s had a tooth pulled and the anesthesia is still paralyzing half her jaw.

  “Is good, is no more hurting,” says Fadila. “When tooth is come out, is no more hurting.”

  Which leads Édith to conclude that Fadila does not know that there are other ways to deal with a bad tooth besides pulling it, or merely waiting for it to fall out; one can have it treated, for example.

  22

  Fadila is coughing. From her bag she takes a bottle of syrup they sold her at the pharmacy: “Is no working at all.”
r />   Édith has to agree: “Cough syrup doesn’t do any good. Only in France would they try to convince you otherwise. No, you know what works for a cough? Suppositories. You know what that is?”

  Fadila makes a face: “I no like.”

  “That’s as may be,” says Édith, “But it’s what works the best.”

  Fadila looks at her, a twinkle in her eye.

  “You know what we are doing in Morocco?” she begins, then, “No, I no can say.”

  She laughs, as if at a bawdy joke, then concludes, “We taking garlic, you know. And is putting there, like suppository.”

  “A clove of garlic?”

  “Yes. Is working very good.”

  She is still coughing. “Go see a doctor,” urges Édith. Fadila had told her she has a family doctor where she has been going for years: “Is not expensive.”

  “But I no have money,” she says now, gloomily.

  She works roughly twenty-five hours a week, her rent is e120, she’s as frugal as they come: she must have enough for a co-payment for a visit to her doctor.

  “Don’t your children help you?” asks Édith.

  Fadila is taken aback: “My children? Is me helping them, is them ask me for money!”

  Her daughters and their husbands, her son, all five of them are between forty and fifty years of age and they are all working: whatever next?

  “You give money to your children?” echoes Édith.

  “Life is expensive,” says Fadila.

  She explains that her son’s wife doesn’t work, that she was brought up to have whatever she wants, she buys “chocolate, almonds,” their little girl has everything she needs. “When I go see them they asking for money.”

  Édith suddenly remembers the credit card Fadila uses only at the ATM in Pantin, and the code that her son knows by heart.

  “When your son goes with you to withdraw money on your credit card, do you give him that money?”

  Fadila shrugs: “’Course.”

  She doesn’t say that her daughters do likewise. And she doesn’t even reproach her son for asking for help. She never reproaches him for anything.

  Her daughters, on the other hand, neglect her, which she cannot help but point out. They never go to visit her. They don’t call often enough. There are even times when they are in the neighborhood and don’t even come up to say hello.

  She cannot understand this. “If you living not far from your mother, you go seeing her, spend some time with her. If he going shopping you going shopping with her. I’m no young, after all.”

  A silence. “Aïcha she racist,” she says finally.

  “Racist?”

  “Yes. All she care is friends, I go seeing friends, I sleeping friend’s house. And me she say she no have time seeing me. With me is racist.”

  Édith cannot help but feel irritated when she sees how Fadila’s expectations differ, depending on whether she is speak­ing of her daughters or her son.

  “Your son could look after you a bit more, too, no?”

  “No, is daughters,” says Fadila again. “Is daughters they gotta look after is mama.”

  “And sons? Don’t they have to look after their mother?”

  “No, sons is gotta look after is wife.”

  She arrives one day with a full page of words copied out the day before—her first and last name clearly written but all run together, and then, similarly: NASSERLARBIT, AÏCHAREREARERBRERC.

  Édith separates NASSER, LARBIT, AÏCHA, drawing circles around each name. Fadila copies them out again flawlessly, making her letters cleanly and quickly. But even immediately afterwards she cannot write them from memory.

  Édith gives her a new sheet with models. She insists upon the importance of working on her own at home. “It’s what we call homework. Everyone who learns to read and write has to do it, every day, in addition to their class.”

  “So is going in my head.”

  “Yes, so it goes in your head.”

  Fadila is feeling bloated today. It happens on a regular basis, she has bad digestion.

  Her daughter Zora comes to do the ironing in her place. A good-looking woman with a smooth face under her white head­scarf, calm, reserved.

  When Édith gets ready to pay her, she seems offended: “No, no money. I’m doing it for my mother.”

  Right. Édith will pay Fadila for Zora’s hours. She has seen daughters who behave more ungratefully toward their mother.

  “Is feeling a little better.” Fadila is back at work.

  She used the time while she was sick at home to practice writing. “Twice,” she says, raising her index and middle fingers on her right hand.

  “And what did you write?”

  “Nasser, Aïcha, is name my children.”

  “Well done. Can you write them without a model?”

  “No. I doing with paper next to me.”

  “So your first and last name: you must know them by heart.”

  But no. Today Fadila can’t recall them, no.

  Reading is not going all that well, either. Édith points to MA, the beginning of MADAME, and Fadila reads Fa. AI, the beginning of Aïcha: Fadila reads Nasser. Édith points out the difference in length of the two words, the difference in the initial letters. Clearly the analytical approach isn’t working, but neither is the global approach.

  When it comes to copying RUE LABORDE, Fadila runs the two words together. She has not yet assimilated the notion of a word. Édith shows her that there are medium-sized words, very long words, and little words with two letters, and that you can tell a word precisely because it is separated from the others by a blank space on either side. “Letters are attached, but not words,” she says again.

  They are interrupted by a telephone call. When Édith returns, Fadila is finishing copying out a word she found on the cover of the magazine Le Débat which had been left on the table, the word CULTURE. Not a single mistake. Édith congratulates her. Fadila raises an eyebrow: “Is not enough is writing, I gotta know what is mean.”

  Édith decides to try something more aggressive. She sets her little laptop down between them. On the screen is the first page of the Alphalire method.

  “It’s a game for learning how to read,” she says airily, as if she had never brought it up before. “Look—”

  Fadila interrupts her. “I no see nothing, is computer.”

  Édith argues with her. “It’s like a sheet of paper, you know. If you can see the letters on a page, you can see them on a computer.”

  “I no see,” insists Fadila. She is determined: “My son say is giving headache.”

  Fadila studies a photograph that came in the mail for Édith. Two young newlyweds smiling outside a church.

  “Is family?” she asks.

  “My goddaughter.” Édith adds that the young woman is a doctor, her husband is a teacher and they are going to do a year of volunteer service in Africa.

  “Is good,” says Fadila. “No is many is doing like that.”

  She knows several young Moroccan men who would like to get married but who cannot find suitable girls. “Today girls they is not serious, is running around, too much boys.”

  Édith, who knows what these boys would call a suitable girl, protests: “There are a lot of perfectly serious young women.”

  “No, is finish. You staying here all day long. You no know what is go on.”

  “But your granddaughters are married,” says Édith. “They’re fine girls.”

  Fadila cannot deny it. It is all thanks to their father, she explains, Zora’s husband. “Zora her husband he say is anything happen he cutting throat to everyone.”

  “He wouldn’t do that to his own daughters, now would he?”

  “Yes, is his daughters, is wife, is everybody. Zora is always afraid. Real Moroccan man he that way.”

&n
bsp; 23

  Fadila is furious. That very morning, a woman whom she has been working for over the last few months lost her temper with her (over her schedule?) and told her she could replace her with ten other people. With so many people out of work . . .

  Édith tries to calm her down: “You should have told her that you can find work in ten other houses.”

  To no avail. “Is someone working your house is like family,” says Fadila. “You no has to say is ten others can replace you.”

  For her, work creates a reciprocal bond between two people that goes far beyond an employment contract. You don’t go undoing those bonds in an offhand, unilateral way. On the contrary, you do everything you can never to break them.

  She knows her son’s telephone number by heart. Édith tries to persuade her that if she knows it by heart, one number after the other, she will be able to write it.

  It’s not altogether true, but almost. Where numbers are concerned, the analytical method seems to work. Numbers, of course, are not nearly as abstract as letters, provided you keep to their basic function, and use them essentially for measuring quantities.

  Tension is running high this particular Tuesday. Fadila wanted to come to work at the beginning of the afternoon but, when she got there, she realized she had forgotten her key. There was no one at home. So she had to go back to her house to fetch it then come back.

  Now she finds that the shirts hanging to dry have been buttoned from top to bottom, and she has to unbutton them to iron them, and it’s exasperating. She comes to complain to Édith, just when Édith is struggling with a particularly tricky passage. “Blame my husband,” says Édith, who knows that Fadila respects Gilles and is very fond of him.

  She immediately regrets her words, not because she used him to get out of it—she wasn’t lying, after all—but for telling Fadila that her husband, in addition to being amiable and cheerful, hangs up the laundry to dry.