“‘Course! I no loving him. I no loving no one, never! I never felt no love for any man!”
She says it forcefully, with satisfaction, the way you might say, I’m not stupid! Let other people get on with such idiotic nonsense.
*
L’Abbé Pierre has died. The news talks of little else, and everyone is upset. “I crying,” says Fadila. “That is beautiful life. God he bless him. I think, once a person is nice, God no let him down.”
Fadila comes in and finds Édith in the kitchen, standing at the counter eating bread and cheese. It is nearly three o’clock.
“Excuse me, this is my lunch,” says Édith. “I’m not exactly running on time.”
“You no sitting?” scolds Fadila. “You gotta stop for eating. For vacation and for eating you gotta take time. Otherwise is work, and work is never end.”
That idiot Zora still hasn’t called her mother. “He knowing what I gonna say, is why.”
“She must be scared to death, every night with that brute. Are there children in the house at least?”
Fadila sits up, furious.
“What she afraid of? You no has to be afraid nothing! You no afraid people, is afraid God, is all! If God he no decide is people they kill you, then people no kill you.”
“But you can be afraid of being beaten, don’t you think?”
Fadila stands like a boxer, her fists raised: “If I was her, I the one do the beating.”
Then, inversely, she rounds her back: “Zora is like this! If always she gonna be like this, is everyone they step on her. Her brother he say other day she come his house she eating all her plate then falling asleep. All he do is eating and sleeping.”
Fadila shakes her head, dismayed: “I never seen love like that.”
That weekend she moved. Her son borrowed a van to transport all the furniture and heavy objects. Her daughter Aïcha went with her by taxi, after filling the trunk with her clothing and odds and ends, in bags.
At rue de Laborde they said a proper goodbye among neighbors. They promised to meet again.
Fadila is in good spirits. She has a real studio, with a window overlooking a garden and, for the first time (in her life, Édith supposes), she has her own bathroom. On every floor in the hostel there is a large common kitchen at the disposal of the residents, and everyone has their own food locker with a key.
“You’ll make new friends there,” says Édith.
“No.” Fadila is categorical. “I no see nobody. Is Arabs, I know, is nothing but problems.”
“Even the women?”
“Arab women, you no know them, is blah-blah-blah, she do this, she say that, is nothing but trouble. I no want to see. Anyway I no have time, I leave, I work, I going home, I take shower, making prayer, and sleep.”
She seems to be limping slightly.
“You’re limping,” says Édith. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“Is leg hurting. I try too hard. I going up the stairs, down the stairs, climb on stool, climb off stool.”
“Try to get some rest, now.”
“Rest? I no have time. No, is leg I don’t bother with it, is all. I’m no twenty years old, right? Just I have courage, is all.”
She is enjoying the luminosity and tranquillity of her new accommodation. The room is sunny. There is no noise at night. “Is quiet, is clean. On my floor is only three people, is two old women they retired, and me. I no see nobody, is better that way.”
The presidential election campaign is in full swing. The confrontation between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy is on everyone’s minds.
“He is a man. Is better man is president,” decides Fadila.
That is just what a woman who has been crushed by machismo since birth would say, thinks Édith. But how many “born and bred” French people also share her opinion?
33
Her expression is glum, her lips are pursed.
“Is something wrong?”
That would be an understatement. She moved over two weeks ago now, and Fadila cannot understand why her son has not come to see her even once: he lives a hundred yards away from the hostel. The day before yesterday, Sunday evening, after she had waited all weekend for at least a phone call, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She called him.
Her son told her straight up that he didn’t like the fact she’d moved to Pantin because his wife didn’t like it.
“It’s typical,” says Édith. “She’s afraid you’ll be over at their place all the time.”
Of course, wails Fadila. But it’s this very hypothesis that makes her so angry. She’s never tried to impose at her son’s house, she’s never found fault with her daughter-in-law about anything, she’s never criticized in any way, even implicitly. “I never saying I need this, I need that, the way other old women is doing, I never asking for money.”
“I thought your daughter-in-law liked you?”
Fadila doesn’t think so: “She no say nothing but she never looking in the eye. After she go talking my son.”
She sits with her hands between her knees. There are days when the work can just wait a while. It wasn’t her idea, after all, to move into this hostel in Pantin. She didn’t even know it existed. She wasn’t the one who went to find out whether she could get in and how to apply.
After her son first mentioned it, she went over to his place to discuss it, on purpose, in her daughter-in-law’s presence. The young woman did not seem to be particularly reticent. Later, just after she found out she’d been given a spot at the hostel, she had lunch with them; it was two days later, a Sunday, she remembers. She spoke openly of how pleased she was, turning to her little two-year-old granddaughter and saying, right in front of her daughter-in-law: “I say I taking the little girls to the park on Wednesdays with sandwiches.” Now she seems to recall that her daughter-in-law fell silent at that point. “She thinking I going her place before I going to the park. Is not true! I take the little girls and I go, I don’t see her!”
Édith reasons with her. It will work out. In a little while, once Fadila has shown them she knows how to be discreet, and that she will never show up at their door uninvited, her daughter-in-law will be reassured. She’ll come around.
Fadila shakes her head wordlessly.
“You’ll see,” insists Édith, “your son will be in touch very soon. He’s a good son, you’ve always said as much. He’s kind.”
“He’s kind but is changing.”
She wipes her eye.
“Is daughter-in-law never like mother-in-law.”
“It’s because they’re rivals. They love the same man. And in general the husbands show that they prefer their wife.”
Fadila nods her head. She knows this as well as Édith.
“Yesterday I crying,” she says. “All my life I crying.”
She is getting ready to leave, her long coat buttoned up to her neck and her black headscarf pulled tight around her head, when the door opens. It is Gilles, home earlier than usual. He has a big bouquet of flowers in his hand, little roses of a ravishing color, which he bought for no particular reason as he was walking by the florist’s, something he does from time to time.
“Here,” he says to Fadila. He pulls the bouquet apart and holds out half of it to her.
She stands there with her arms tight against her body.
“Nobody is never giving me flowers, not me.”
“Well, all the more reason, then,” says Gilles.
As she watches her, Édith wonders whether Fadila is not about to succumb to her emotion. Perhaps that is what Fadila herself is afraid of, as she tucks the flowers between her elbow and her side and says simply, “Thank you, then. Goodbye.”
Little Paul has constant chalazions and his eyelids are swollen. Fadila knows what it is.
“Has to use orange flower water, is making germs go away.”
“Have you seen all the medication he has?”
“Is medication no doing no good. Is orange flower water is good for everything. You putting on cotton when he go to bed, you washing his eyes. Even for the heart is very good.”
She is in better spirits. Her son and daughter-in-law came to see her on Sunday, with her granddaughters. They all went for a walk, the weather was fine.
Fadila herself volunteers this information, while she’s having a little coffee break in the kitchen.
Yesterday she went to the police préfecture to renew her residence permit. She waited in line for hours. And once it was her turn, since she had just moved, things got complicated. She didn’t leave with a new permit. They are supposed to send it to her.
“There’s no problem, then?” asks Édith. “You’ll get your permit?”
“Me, I never had no problems with permit,” says Fadila confidently. “I been careful. I no have the courage do stupid things.”
34
She pulls up a chair next to Édith and sits down heavily. “Has to begin again,” she says.
“With pleasure,” says Édith approvingly, trying to make her tone as light as if they had never interrupted their lessons.
But she remembers how Fadila had asked to go “slow-slow” after an earlier interruption, and that even then they were starting over.
“Would you like to work on the numbers for a while?”
That is fine with Fadila, particularly as she has a new telephone number. She’s making do without a landline: Aïcha has given her a cell phone.
“That’s very kind of her,” remarks Édith.
“No, is no kind, she having another, is give me old one. Is no kind, Aïcha.”
“She helped you move.”
“Yes, and after she no phoning, never! Is one month, maybe more. She be selfish-center.”
SELFISH, writes Édith at the top of a blank sheet, pronouncing the word at the same time. And below it: 06.
“You know all the cell phone numbers begin with 06. Which is lucky for you, because those are two numbers you write easily.”
She has the impression she is pulling on an extremely fragile string. But Fadila copies the two numbers perfectly.
They go back over the eight other ones. “By the way,” says Édith, “you will have to give me your new address. We’ll learn to write it, too.”
“Is next time I bringing,” says Fadila.
She copies out her new telephone number once, then gets up: “Give me paper, I studying at home.”
Édith called Fadila that morning to tell her that this afternoon she won’t be alone. She’ll be working at home with an English novelist, a close acquaintance. Her French is good and she wants to go over the translations of her books carefully. Édith has no objections; on the contrary.
Fadila keeps out of the way that afternoon. When she is ready to leave, Édith and Magdalena Wright are still at work. She sticks her head through the door and with a smile she says, “Well then, goodbye, girls!”
She wants to learn new words. Just as well, thinks Édith. No point in dwelling on what she has most probably forgotten.
“What are your granddaughters’ names?” she asks. “Your son’s two girls.”
Nabila and Zaina. “All letters you know,” says Édith, writing the two names in big letters.
She takes the opportunity to inquire about them. Fadila is delighted that the older girl, not yet three, is always asking to write. Her mother gives her paper and pencils and the little girl covers the paper with big circles.
“Is like that when you speaking a lot to the children they little,” says Fadila. She finds her daughter-in-law somewhat evasive, and she thinks she should stop breast-feeding the younger girl, who’s ten months old, and go and look for work. Still, she cannot help but admire the educated woman in her, and she knows that, undeniably, she is a good mother.
Fadila opens the main door downstairs and comes upon Édith in the entrance with a mop and a bucket. There was a broken bottle, wine has spilled on the tiles. The building has no concierge, and the cleaning of the shared space is done only once a week by a cleaning company.
“Is you cleaning this?” scolds Fadila. “Why is no that lady she looking after the garbage cans?”
The woman in question, a young North African whom Fadila has already run into, takes the containers in and out, nothing more, explains Édith, she doesn’t do any cleaning.
Fadila interrupts her: “She has head in the air. Is Algerian.”
And in answer to Édith’s questioning look: “Is proud. Is Algerians they has head in the air. Is saying they French, no want to do cleaning.”
Édith writes ZAINA just below AÏCHA, and tries to make Fadila see what the two words have in common. Fadila sees the A’s, but not the I’s with their little dieresis on top.
Nor does she recognize the word AÏCHA anymore.
Then Édith writes ZAINA and under that, ZORA.
“And these two names, Zaina and Zora (she stresses the Z), what do they have that’s the same?”
Fadila points to the A in Zora.
“You know the A really well,” Édith congratulates her.
She has brought back out the “treasure chest” of the words Fadila acquired so slowly the previous year. She copies it out for her—it takes her all of a minute—hands it to her, and says, “These are the words we spent a lot of time on, you know them. You can copy them out at home, we’ll go back over them next week.”
But Édith needs something to take her to the next stage. At the rate they’re working, one step forward, two steps back, they will lose heart. Fadila will soon be so discouraged she won’t want to go on.
Édith calls her cousin Sara. She knows what she’s looking for, now. Fadila needs a private teacher, a real one, someone like a retired professor, who will give her at least three classes a week.
Sara is not too optimistic. But she has some friends who know more than she does about the milieu of literacy learning, and she’s willing to give them a ring.
She calls back two days later. Édith will be pleased: the parish of Saint-Séverin, in Paris, have founded an association that offers personalized literacy classes.
“Private lessons?” asks Édith, who can scarcely believe her ears.
“Precisely. The teachers meet with students one on one. It’s made to measure.”
Édith calls the person in charge. Her cousin was right. They have to find a time slot but almost all the teachers are retirees, volunteers, and in general have a fair amount of free time. Also, Fadila must be willing to go to the premises of the association for her classes, opposite the church of Saint-Séverin—although there are a few volunteers who are willing to go elsewhere for the lesson, or who don’t mind working from home.
There are all sorts of possibilities. All Fadila has to do is go by the association one day and sign up, they’ll talk it over.
35
What’s the matter?” asks Édith, who knows now that she has cause to be worried when Fadila walks in without saying a word, not even hello.
“Is crying, crying.”
It turns out that Nasser and his family have moved away from Pantin. It took all of three days. They’d been wanting to move for months. They had put their name down here and there. In the end Auchan, Nasser’s employer, found him a place to live, a good-sized apartment, near his work.
Nasser and his wife couldn’t stand their two hundred square feet anymore. They immediately said yes and on Saturday they moved. They’re absolutely thrilled: they now have a real two-bedroom in a new building.
“Is it far from Pantin?”
“Is very far, way other side,” she said, with a wave, “at the end the RER A, at Maison de la Fête.”
Édith unfolds a map of the RER.
“You mean Maisons-Laffi
tte?”
“Yes, is Maison de la Fête.”
“Put yourself in their shoes: how could they say no? At last they have a proper place to live. Some day soon you can look for a place nearby. Your son will help you find something.”
No, she says. She just had her residence permit renewed, with her new address in Pantin. She can’t keep moving all the time.
And anyway, she wants to go back to Morocco. She’s been thinking about it more and more. “Is my brother he wants I coming. Is big house. Is people stay in France they no go nowhere.”
Look at her neighbors at the hostel. “They going market is the morning, is coming home, is watching television. They say they is staying because the health care. But is health care no stop you dying! Is in Morocco everything you need. If you getting sick, is hospital.”
Work on her letters? Today? She puts on a sorry face: “You thinking I manage learning with everything is happen now?”
Édith will wait for a more auspicious moment to tell her about the classes in Saint-Séverin.
Two days ago, April 22nd, the first round of the presidential elections was held. As was to be expected, the remaining candidates are Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy.
All the papers imply that the immigrants are dreading a Sarkozy victory.
“You know,” says Édith, “if Nicolas Sarkozy wins, it won’t be what we call a disaster. It won’t change much for you.”
Fadila reacts sharply: “’Course is no disaster! Is people saying Sarkozy is disaster, but I no saying. You know what is problem? Is Sarkozy he say the truth. What is French people they say? Truth hurts?”
“I go seeing Nasser there Maison de la Fête: is like Côte d’Azur! Is nice place! Is no Blacks, no Arabs. They got two bedrooms, one bedroom for daughter, one bedroom for parents. Is baby in the buggy very happy, they open window is trees. They on the ground floor and just outside is garden.
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