A King in Hiding

by Fahim

  ‘Bravo! Bravo Fahim! You are incredible!’

  The Hungarian was surprised. He wasn’t happy. In the return match he’d try harder.

  My next opponent was an old man. Really old. He had to be at least – I don’t know how old. Before we started the game he offered me a sweet. I didn’t know him so I said no: I’m not daft. So he unwrapped it and popped it in his mouth. Instantly I wished I’d said yes. He had wrinkles and he shook, which was annoying. I couldn’t concentrate. I wasn’t great in the next game either.

  Then I played a British journalist, who was really nice. She had blonde hair and her name was Diana. She was good. It was a tough game. I captured one of her pieces without giving up anything in return. I had the advantage and I hung on to it. I defended my piece so she couldn’t take it. I dodged and feinted and wriggled. The game went on for four hours. Gradually we were reaching stalemate. It was impossible to mount an attack. That extra piece was blocking the way. Finally I gave up and suggested a draw. Fortunately in the next round I got my own back. Putting on my best serious face, I said to Diana:

  ‘You play well. You gave me the hardest time of them all. Can we play again?’

  We met up again for friendly games as soon as we could, and we became friends. From then on she would greet me not with a handshake but with a kiss on the cheek, as though we were family.

  XP: Later, in a piece entitled ‘Fahim the Conqueror’ and published on the Chess News website, Diana Mihajlova wrote:

  ‘The chess-playing part was easy and tremendously enjoyable, but communication was difficult as the father spoke no word of any European language, though the boy was making the utmost effort with his admirable if broken English. I retain a picture of the two of them – the boy always impeccably groomed and perfectly behaved, the father polite, quiet and visibly over-protective of his child, always hand in hand, as if facing together the menace of this new, frightening world.’

  The First Saturday was nearly over. I won the last two rounds against a strange man. In my head I called him Madness. I finished with six-and-a-half points out of ten. The other players congratulated me. I was so happy. I’d beaten my own goal. Now all I wanted to do was go home and tell … No, I couldn’t think about that.

  We stayed on in Hungary for a while, and Nagy Laszlo and Diana took turns to show us round Budapest. I liked it. Except for the food, which was bland and tasteless. The only things I liked were the noodles, the burgers and the cakes. I wondered why people in Hungary hardly ever ate rice. At home, a meal without rice was just a snack. Some families even had rice for breakfast.

  My father explained to Nagy and Diana that we had to carry on to Madrid. They found us a bus, but it didn’t go to Madrid direct: it stopped in France and we would have to change in Paris. I didn’t want to go to France, I didn’t even want to travel through France. A friend in Bangladesh had told me that in France they eat dogs. I tried to reassure myself by thinking about Zinedine Zidane: perhaps it was eating dog that made him so good? But Zidane or no Zidane, there was no way I was going to eat dog. If I went to France I might starve to death. In which case I might just as well go and die in Bangladesh. I wanted to tell my father, but I didn’t dare. So I got on the bus with him, and on 17 October 2008 I got off again at Porte de Bagnolet in Paris. The last stop. France.

  Chapter 5

  WELCOME TO FRANCE

  In France we don’t know a soul, but one of my father’s friends in Bangladesh has told his cousin that we’re coming, and he’s there to meet us at the bus station. His name is M. Bamoun. At last, someone who speaks our language! He has lived in the Père-Lachaise district of Paris for twenty years. He is unemployed, and is struggling to make ends meet. But he and his wife put us up on a mattress in their living room all the same: for us, helping each other out is a tradition.

  ‘How old are you, Fahim?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘My daughter Alya is the same age as you: you can be friends.’

  I can’t wait to play with her. But soon I’m stunned by the way she behaves. She uses bad language, and when she wants something she screams at her mother. In Bangladesh no child would dare behave like that. I don’t yet know that in France there are lots of parents who let their children behave like little dictators, and no one seems to mind.

  We’ve barely moved in before I fall ill. I’m all yellow and running a fever. I can’t swallow anything and I itch all over. I feel so bad I think I’m going to die. It seems so unfair to die so far from home, in a place I don’t even know. My father looks after me. He gives me water to drink and watches over me.

  A doctor comes. He speaks to M. Bamoun in French. I don’t understand a word. He keeps saying Alya’s name. But I’m the one who’s ill. The doctor examines me and calls me Alya. I’m furious. I’m not a girl! Can’t he see that? But I’m too weak to protest. He scribbles obscure words on an orange form, and M. Bamoun looks relieved.

  When my temperature drops my father starts getting ready to leave for Spain, but several people advise us to stay. They say that France protects people like us. I like the idea that a country can defend us against our enemies. So my father makes a decision. We’ll stay. While we wait for things to calm down in Bangladesh. While we wait to go home. He doesn’t ask me what I think, but I agree with him: it doesn’t look as though anyone is going to make me eat dog.

  Life with the Bamouns is pretty good, especially the meals: Mme Bamoun is a good cook. But the days drag on for ever. I spend all day watching cartoons on television. Luckily you can understand them even if you don’t know any French. When Alya comes home from school she switches channels without asking me. To show me who’s boss. I’m jealous.

  My father and I go out a lot, to meet people and explore the streets. But our visa runs out, and everyone warns us to look out for the police. So we go out less and less, only when we need to. My father’s afraid that they might find us and put us on a plane back to Bangladesh. Direct. I imagine the masked men in black who’ll be waiting to kill me as I get off the plane. M. Bamoun is scared too, frightened that someone might report him to the authorities. He tells us that in France you can get sent to prison for taking in friends. So he hides us: when visitors come, we wait on the stairs until they’ve gone.

  One day, I’m on the Métro with my father and M. Bamoun. Suddenly three men in navy blue uniforms and caps appear in our carriage. They look like policemen. People are showing them their tickets. M. Bamoun signals to my father, who grabs me by the hand and jumps on to the platform just as the doors are closing. We charge towards the exit. In front of us are two other men, one black and the other white. The train pulls out, accelerates and is swallowed up by the tunnel. We glance over our shoulders and slow down: phew!

  Then all of a sudden the two men in front of us give a start and double back on their tracks: in the passage I can see more men in uniform. Still gripping my hand, my father runs after our two partners in crime. Following their lead, we race down some narrow steps that go down to the Métro tracks. Carried forward by his own momentum, the first man leaps over the rails and is already clambering up on to the platform opposite. My father and I are about to follow him when the other one pulls us back:

  ‘No! It’s too dangerous!’

  I’m paralysed with fear. What if the policemen come on to the platform? What if they find us here, skulking in the shadows like criminals? And why have the rails suddenly started to judder and make that deafening noise? I flatten myself against the wall. The man checks the platform in the mirror above our heads, and after a moment that feels like an eternity he signals to us that the coast is clear. We climb back up and get on the train that pulls into the station, trying to look natural. At last the bell rings, the doors close and the train starts moving. My legs have turned to jelly and I want to cry, but I don’t let it show. I want to squeeze up against my father but I don’t dare. Slowly the knots in my stomach start to unwind.

  In bed that night I turn things over in my mind. Why didn’t
my father, who is so honest, buy us tickets for the Métro? Has he run out of money? Over the next few days, I watch him secretly. I listen in when he’s on the phone. He says that we can’t stay in the Bamouns’ living room for ever. When he asks for money – from his friends in Spain and Switzerland and a cousin in Scotland – he sounds embarrassed.

  XP: Undeterred by his total lack of knowledge of the French language and legal system, Nura set out to find a way of staying in France with his son. There was good community support, and he discovered the existence of the right of asylum, a right recognised by the United Nations since 1967, which allows people who are in danger in their own country to seek the hospitality and protection of another country. He learned that France, ‘home of the rights of man’, had offered asylum for several centuries and viewed it as a national tradition. So it was therefore with complete confidence that he took to the tortuous byways of the French legal system and bureaucracy, embarking on a journey that – given the self-evident nature of his predicament – should have taken just a few months. Other Bangladeshis in Paris pointed him in the direction of the organisation France Terre d’Asile (the name means France, Land of Asylum), set up to provide support for asylum seekers, both in making their applications and in their daily lives.

  So it was that, after Dhaka, Kolkata, New Delhi, Rome and Budapest, Nura and Fahim found themselves in the Paris suburb of Créteil, a mere stone’s throw – as luck would have it – from one of the best chess schools in France.

  France Terre d’Asile send us to the Préfecture, a big modern building with windows everywhere: the glass is orange, and to me it looks as though it’s holding the sun hostage inside. It must be a magic place, and I hope we’ll come back often. As soon as we get inside the illusion is shattered: there are crowds of people waiting, and the minutes crawl by. At last we are seen by a lady with funny red hair who isn’t very friendly and gives us a great pile of forms to fill in. Back at home, my father stares in dismay at the long list of questions to which he doesn’t know the answers. They ask for names, dates and places that he doesn’t know without looking them up. He rummages about in our things, searching for documents and evidence. Then, with M. Bamoun, he writes down our story and describes the problems we had in Bangladesh.

  When they’ve finished, M. Bamoun takes my father to have it all translated. I don’t understand why he can’t do it himself, as he speaks good French. He explains that you have to use a translator who has taken an oath.

  The next day we go back to Créteil. It’s raining, and the house of the sun isn’t filled with light any more. In fact it’s pretty ugly. When I see all the people waiting inside, I begin to hate the place.

  XP: That day, Nura was given temporary leave to stay, which meant that he and Fahim could legally stay in France for a month, the period needed to verify whether or not his application would be considered. Armed with this, they were given accommodation by France Terre d’Asile, initially in emergency hostels and subsequently, when space became available, at the Centre d’Acceuil pour Demandeurs d’Asile (CADA), the centre for asylum-seekers in Créteil.

  Thus Nura and his son embarked on the obstacle course that awaits all immigrants arriving on French soil. Of course they had absolutely no idea of what lay in store for them. Despite being involved in community work, I too had little notion then of what daily life was like for asylum-seekers, or of the obstacles they had to overcome. It was a subject in which Fahim was to become my teacher.

  ‘The hostel at Créteil is full at the moment.’

  The woman picks up the phone and dials 115. After a brief conversation she announces:

  ‘The Samu Social, an organisation that finds accommodation for homeless people, has found you a hotel room.’

  M. Bamoun translates. My father stiffens:

  ‘I’ve run out of money.’

  Just as I thought.

  ‘No need to worry. The cost is covered while your application is being processed.’

  I think about all the people living on the streets of Dhaka, all the poor people who are homeless. I’d never imagined there might be an organisation that could find them somewhere to stay. Let alone that one day it would be me needing this sort of help.

  It’s already late when we get to Fresnes. The man on reception shows us the room: it’s magnificent, with a television, and in the bathroom a tiny swimming pool called a bath.

  Gesturing with his hands, the man asks if we have eaten, and when my father signals ‘no’, he goes away and comes back with a tin of something. The label says ‘sweetened condensed milk’, which means nothing to us. But since we’re starving we accept it eagerly. My father opens the can. It’s full of white, sticky goo. I taste it. Milk, sweet and sickly: yuck! Who could eat that? We throw it away and go to bed hungry.

  By the next day I realise that this hotel is not the paradise I thought it was: in fact it’s more like a version of hell. During the day we have to get out of the rooms. Even if we have nothing to do, nowhere to go, no official stuff to take care of, no one to go and see. And it’s cold. Colder than you can imagine. I have a lovely coat with a red collar that my father had bought me in India, but even with my jumper on underneath it I’m still cold. My father finds a hat and gloves for me. I’m sure it won’t be enough to stop me freezing to death.

  So we go out as little as possible. We stay in the foyer. All day. With nothing to do. Ten hours a day. Ten long hours of endless boredom. In the foyer. In the corridor. In the icy draughts. Sometimes standing up, sometimes sitting down. Sometimes in front of a television screen showing rolling news bulletins that I don’t understand.

  We’re not the only ones. There are other people waiting with us. People of all ages and colours. People from all over the world who have ended up here by an accident of fate, like us. Occasionally, not very often, they talk. In whispers almost. As if it’s against the rules. They speak in languages I don’t understand. We can’t even communicate with each other: we come from different corners of the globe.

  I’m raging. I want to go back to our room, to sleep, have a shower, warm up. To play chess with my father. But I don’t complain: I can see that he’s fed up too. I don’t want to heap my unhappiness on top of his. So I keep quiet. And I wait.

  We only go out when we need to buy something to eat: a little rice, chicken or fish. Then we have to wait ages for our turn to use the kitchen. When the food is ready, we eat. My father cooks well. Though obviously not as well as …

  When evening comes at last, we go up to our room. I go straight to bed and fall asleep. To forget.

  After a month, we go to a different hotel. Out towards Valenton. It’s a day I’ll never forget. I’d never seen snow before. I’d heard a lot about it and I couldn’t wait to see it. People in France are lucky. Well, that day it was snowing. Really snowing. And it didn’t take me long to realise that I detested it: it was freezing cold, the pavements were all slippery, and we struggled with our cases. Now I could see that snow was completely pointless, that it was just a pain for everyone.

  We had to find the bus station, the bus for Valenton, the stop to get off at, the hotel. It’s so hard living in a country when you don’t speak the language!

  At Valenton, our life gets better. We’re allowed to stay in our rooms. So I flop in front of the television. I drug myself up with cartoons and mangas. When I’ve had enough, I turn the TV off and do nothing. I stretch out and think. I’d like to have friends. To play with them. Is it possible to have friends in France?

  The hotel is in a remote district miles from anywhere, where there’s nothing to do and the streets are deserted. There’s a massive shopping centre, but it’s always empty. I wonder how the people who work there earn a living. My father and I go there regularly to buy provisions. Since we don’t have a refrigerator, we keep our food on the windowsill. In Bangladesh it would go off in no time.

  We get to know a Bangladeshi couple at the hotel. They arrived on the same day as us, and will leave with us too. I
don’t know yet that they will get their papers long before we do. I like them: we speak the same language. They and my father talk together. I hear them say that we may be in France for a long time. A very long time. That I might have to live here for ever. That I might never go home again.

  So I decide to live a life with no regrets, not to look back to the past any more, not to think about Bangladesh any more.

  A month later the news comes. They’re expecting us at the Créteil hostel. Another move, more chaos. It’s pouring with rain. The gutters in the street are overflowing. Our bags are heavy. We’re soaked.

  As we arrive at the hostel, a handful of people in the foyer watch us vaguely. A woman smiles at us. I feel intimidated. My father makes straight for the reception desk. A man arrives: he’s tall and he’s called Muhamad. He shakes our hands warmly and quickly jots down some notes before giving us some things: two toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, a broom, toilet paper and 45 euros. We’re rich again!

  We follow Muhamad up some stairs and along a corridor that’s horrible and running with water, with pails and floor cloths in the middle, dustbins in a corner, and all sorts of stuff piled up at the far end. He opens a door with numbers on it that I recognise from my English lessons at school: 123, easy to remember. This is our room. It’s small, with bunk beds. I choose the bottom one. There’s also a table and two chairs, a wardrobe, a washbasin and a refrigerator. Outside the window, between two tall buildings, the bare branches of a tree are swaying. My father seems pleased. The room is clean, the walls are white and spotless. He likes it when things are clean and tidy. He detests cockroaches. So do I.

  While my father unpacks our bags, I go off to explore. The corridor has dried out and doesn’t look such a mess. The building is quiet. Too quiet. Like everywhere else in France, there are no children to be seen. I open doors and look inside. I find the bathroom and toilets, which are a bit dirty and disgusting. But Muhamad is back already, and takes us downstairs to a big room full of tables and chairs.