by Fahim
‘Fahim, would you like to come and spend the month of July with me in Brittany?’
‘Brittany? What’s that?’
‘It’s a region in western France. My mother has a house there. I take a few pupils there every year. We relax, have fun and compete in the Plancoët tournament.’
This makes me happy. My father too: he’s invited as well and he really likes ‘Exavier’.
‘Who’ll be there?’
‘Quentin. And Olivier and his mother and sister – they’ve rented a gîte nearby.’
Our holiday in Brittany is fantastic. Marie-Jeanne, Xavier’s mother, is like him: she looks ancient, but in fact she’s really nice, good fun and full of life. She has only one fault, but it’s a big one: she smokes all the time, and it makes the house smell awful. It’s a big, untidy house: the opposite of our own room at the hostel. My father and I sleep with the others in the dormitory on the first floor, while Xavier sleeps in a caravan in the garden.
Every morning he takes me to the beach. The first day I can hardly wait. I long to go swimming, and the sea is so vast and beautiful! I tear down the beach, but when my feet hit the water I get a big shock: it’s absolutely freezing! As consolation I tell myself it’s dangerous, because I can’t swim yet.
In the afternoons we play chess. At the Plancoët tournament I score four points out of nine and win a fine cup. I’ll keep it in my room at the hostel.
In the evening we get excited and play all sorts of games before supper; we play tricks on each other and collapse in fits of giggles. I learn how to play a game with Tarot cards, in which each player is dealt a big hand and you have to try to take the ‘kitty’. When it gets dark, Xavier – who’s a great film fan – hangs a sheet up in the garage and invites round the neighbours, an elderly couple who live next door and an English couple who never stop talking. He’s brought the video projector that he uses for our lessons, and he calls it his ‘Cinema Paradiso’.
On 26 July it’s my birthday. I’m nine years old.
‘Xavier, how old are you?’
I’m amazed to discover that he’s only as old as my father: with his beard and white hair I thought he was much older. Xavier gives me a bicycle and teaches me to ride it. I love it! Hills are tough, though.
‘Xavier, I know why the Tour de France doesn’t go through Brittany.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the hills are too steep.’
When we get back to Créteil there’s a letter waiting for us: our asylum application has been refused. My father isn’t surprised: Frédéric has told him this always happens first time round. So he isn’t worried. Nor am I. He and Frédéric prepare a new application to present to the tribunal: thicker and fuller, with more documents and details. Together they fill out stacks of forms, write dozens of letters, make mountains of photocopies. Everything has to be translated, which costs a lot. But everyone is confident. Next time we’ll be granted asylum.
Chapter 8
MY SECRET DREAM
In September I’m moved up into the mainstream class at school, along with Stéphanie. Most children stay in the special class for non-French speakers for at least a year. But Mme Faustine and the head teacher have explained to me that I’m ready to join the others and do the same lessons as them.
From day one I’m bored. Everything’s too easy. It’s just like in Bangladesh: the teachers make a big fuss about saying things that are completely obvious. Useless. Annoying. They ask us pointless questions, and make us read books that bore us all to tears and then ask us stupid questions about them. I hate school. I don’t even like going swimming: you can’t just splash around, you have to learn to swim, and they’re always making us get out of the water and stand around waiting, and I get cold.
There’s only one thing I look forward to, and that’s going to the chess club. On coaching evenings things always follow the same routine. When we arrive, Xavier talks to my father – or at least he tries to. He asks him about our life and how things are going. My father tells him proudly about my school marks and shows him my reports. Xavier offers him advice about life in France, and about how to make our money go further. They talk about everything. Except ‘papers’: my father quickly realises that Xavier’s had enough of hearing about asylum applications. And our family: Xavier realises even more quickly that it’s a subject that’s too painful for us. Then it’s time to play chess.
‘OK Fahim, are you ready?’
I feel a thrill of anticipation. We sit down facing each other across the chessboard. Sometimes Xavier makes me work on my own moves, and sometimes he makes me work on the moves of grandmasters like Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov and Bobby Fischer. We look at them together, do calculations, make up variants. I love thinking up moves, trying them out, advancing, but Xavier makes me slow down a bit:
‘Careful now, think. Decide on your goals. What do you want to do: imprison the queen or aim for the king?’
‘Um, a bit of both maybe? I dunno, we’ll see, whichever’s best!’
Then he explains at length why I should take my time. Meanwhile I’m boiling over with impatience.
XP: Fahim was gifted, no one could doubt that. His tactical skills were outstanding. But as a strategist he was something of a rough diamond. He had no idea about strategy, no conception even of what strategy was. He didn’t plan his moves ahead. There was a huge amount of work to do to get him up to standard in this area, so that he could deploy his talents to the full. As soon as his French was good enough, we got down to it.
Without being a great worker, he was serious, motivated, conscientious and involved. But his progress was held up by his circumstances. In Bangladeshi chess clubs, members play each other every day. In France, they come just for coaching and competitions. People play each other online: the web has killed off the conviviality of clubs. All good players, even the youngest, have a computer. Fahim didn’t even have access to the internet.
‘Fahim, do you know who said: “To win against me, you have to beat me three times: once in the opening, once in the middlegame and once in the endgame”?’
‘It was Alekhine, wasn’t it?’
‘Precisely so. What you need to do is to work on your endgames. And after that we’ll look at your openings.’
‘But I’d much rather play whole games!’
‘I’m sure you would. I’m not here to “play” with you, though; I’m here to improve your game.’
Sometimes when he isn’t looking I watch Xavier. He’s the complete opposite of my father. He doesn’t care about his appearance, his shirts are all rumpled and his hair is too long – he often forgets to go the barber’s. I like it when he has his hair cut and wears a blue shirt that matches his eyes: it makes him look distinguished.
‘When it comes to your endgame, Fahim, all you ever do is try to checkmate.’
‘Well yes, I want to win, don’t I!’
‘I can see that: your one aim is to destroy your opponent’s king.’
‘I want to crush him, massacre him.’
‘And yet there are other ways of winning the game. You can win through a promotion, by getting one of your pawns to the opposite side of the board and queening.’
‘But while I’m doing that my opponent could checkmate?’
‘Of course you need to keep your eye on your opponent! But if you concentrate your efforts on queening, you don’t need to go to checkmate: if he’s a queen down, your opponent might as well give up there and then.’
‘Hey, I like it! Do you think I could do it without my opponent realising?’
Xavier laughs.
‘Are there other ways of winning?’
‘Over the next few weeks you’re going to work on promotion. But you can also immobilise your opponent.’
‘One day will you show me how?’
XP: When he arrived in 2008, Fahim was good enough to win the French under-10s championship with ease. But as he arrived late in the season, he was too late to get his membership card
and enter the 2009 championship. We had great hopes for 2010. Then to our huge disappointment we discovered over that winter that the rules required entrants to have lived on French soil for three years. Fahim would have to wait until 2012 to try his chances. To win.
As Xavier reveals the secrets of the game to me, he also teaches me funny things like the different ways of saying ‘checkmate’. When the king is blocked in on the back rank by a row of his own pawns and threatened by a rook, it’s called a ‘back-rank mate’ or ‘corridor mate’. When the king can’t move because all the squares around him are occupied, it’s called ‘smothered mate’.
‘And when the opposing queen is right up against the king and pinning him down so he can’t move?’
‘Ah, that’s the “kiss of death”!’
While these sessions are going on, my father sits in a corner, silent and discreet. Sometimes he gets up to look at the chessboard and then sits down again. Sometimes he goes off quietly to look round the club and see if there’s anything useful he can do. Sometimes he offers ‘Exavier’ a coffee. Xavier always says yes, and my father rushes off to make it. The last thing he does, every time, is to go outside and spend ages cleaning Xavier’s motorbike, as though he wants to get it looking as good as new. It’s his way of thanking him for everything: for his coaching sessions, his lessons, his time, his advice, his encouragement, his sympathetic ear, his financial support, his kindness and his cheerfulness. And for his friendship.
Like any teacher, Xavier can be annoying. When he’s cross with me he talks, and that’s annoying. He does it with the others too. During lessons he sometimes shows one of us up in front of the others. Especially when we haven’t done our exercises:
‘Don’t bother to make excuses. I’ve heard them all: my sister scratched her foot and the scabs fell in the computer, the anti-virus software had the flu, the cat fell in the washing machine … I couldn’t care less. Everyone’s entitled not to do their exercises once or twice in the year. But don’t bother telling me why. All I know is that this week doing your exercises wasn’t a priority for you.’
Then he often adds:
‘But I still like you, even so!’
One day, though, I push him too far:
‘I’m sorry Xavier, I haven’t done my exercises.’
Exasperated, he shows me the door:
‘Goodbye.’
After that I’m always careful to do my exercises.
I can understand why Xavier is fed up when we ‘forget’ to do the work he sets us, but I can’t understand his other obsession, which to me seems very strange: he likes us to be ‘punctual’. In Bangladesh no one is ever on time, so no one ever has to wait for anyone else. Xavier just complicates matters by always arriving on time, or even a bit early! He gives me a lecture every time, and sometimes he goes on and on:
‘Fahim, this is the third time you’ve been late for coaching. It’s rude. Punctuality is the politeness of kings. Do you think I’ve got nothing better to do than wait for you to deign to turn up? The next time you’re late I’m not going to wait, I warn you.’
I wait politely for the storm to pass. The following week I’m almost on time. Big surprise: the club is shut. At first I think Xavier hasn’t arrived yet, and my father and I wait outside in the rain. As it gets later and later, I remember Xavier’s threat. I turn to my father:
‘Abba, do you think Xavier was here and that he left because I was late?’
My father smiles:
‘Who put an idea like that in your head? We weren’t late. He said five o’clock, and we were here at a quarter past.’
When it starts to get dark, we have to face facts: Xavier isn’t here. On the way to the club again a couple of days later, I begin to put on a spurt. I don’t like to admit it, but I’m worried: will Xavier be there? From a distance I’m relieved to spot a light in the window. I’m also relieved by the broad grin that greets me as we go in:
‘Aha, I see you’re on time! Bravo Fahim! I hope Tuesday night has taught you a lesson.’
As it turns out, I’m on time for the rest of the year.
XP: Some people might have thought I was hard on Fahim. In fact I was more laid back with him than with any of my other pupils, to the extent that sometimes I could feel it gave rise to tensions and jealousies. I made allowances for the ordeals that he’d gone through and the conditions in which he lived. But I train my pupils to win tournaments: they come to me to become champions, not to be babysat. I can scarcely imagine the great Olympian swimmer Laure Manaudou saying to her trainer: ‘I haven’t done any swimming this week, I had more important things to do.’ Or her trainer replying: ‘OK, that’s fine by me, see if you can do some next week.’
Fahim’s early tournaments brought their fair share of surprises. Some good, some not so good. On the plus side, it turned out that he could play all his moves back from memory, and while this isn’t remarkable for a good adult competitive player, for such a young child it’s exceptional. It testified to the attitude of a player who seriously wants to improve his game. And to an incredible memory – another of his talents, which took me by surprise on more than one occasion. I remember sending him to a tournament that was being held miles away, near the Gare de l’Est. When I got out the map of the Métro to show him how to get there, he reeled off from memory all the different lines and changes and the names of all the stations along the way: one Sunday when he had nothing else to do he’d learned the map off by heart.
But there were disappointments too. Of course Fahim was a far better player than most of the other under-10s. Against adult opponents he played well, very well even, seeking out their flaws, spotting their mistakes and weaknesses, surprising them and often beating them. But when he played against other children the pace was too slow for him, and the stakes were too low. He would get bored, slacken off early in the game, let down his guard and then find himself out of his depth. He’d only wake up when disaster was threatening to strike all over the board.
In April, my friends at the chess club set off for Troyes, for the French championships. Even though I’ve known for months that I can’t compete, and even though I hate travelling, I’m sad to see them go, and a bit angry too. A boy called Chesterkine wins the title. To this day I can’t hear his name without bearing him a slight grudge.
‘Don’t worry, Fahim, I’ve found you a competition in Paris. The organiser’s really nice, you’ll see. Over the years he must have spent more time at chess tournaments than Karpov and Kasparov put together.’
Xavier doesn’t understand: I couldn’t care less about his tournament. I want to compete in the French national championships. And I want to win. Because when I was at the top of the Eiffel Tower I made a promise to myself: one day I’d compete in the European championships. A Bangladeshi at the European championships, now that would be doing it in style! But I don’t kid myself: I know my father can’t afford to send me there. Not there, not anywhere!
In fact I’ll never be able to take part in any international championships – unless I win the French championship first. Then I’ll be selected for the French team and the Federation will send me to the European championships. This is my dream, my secret dream. I never tell it to a soul, for fear it might not come true.
Chapter 9
EVERYONE’S CONVINCED
Even Fred’s optimistic. The tribunal has sent its report, our application is strong, we’re going to get asylum. All the same, Xavier and some of the club members get together to pay for a good lawyer for us. My father is impatient for the hearing. He can’t wait to get his ‘papers’ so he can look for a job and find us somewhere to live. I’m calm and confident: I know everything’s going to work out.
XP: After OFPRA had turned down his application, which was more or less routine, Nura had to lodge an appeal with the Cour Nationale du Droit d’Asile. I was struck from the outset by his confidence, and by that of Frédéric, the social worker at the hostel.
It was true that France had everyth
ing to gain by granting asylum to Fahim. As Jean-Pierre Rosenczveig, president of the children’s tribunal at Bobigny, told him with a touch of cynicism:
‘If you offer us the prospect of an Olympic medal, even a bronze, but better still a silver or gold, your situation will be regularised within a fortnight. Within a month you will be surprised to discover that your grandfather was French, and afterwards your father as well. Then hot on their heels, you too will become French. France is prepared to sell her soul for a medal!’
So in order to cover all bases I mobilised the French Chess Federation, which produced a magnificent letter:
‘Fahim plays to an exceptional standard, and he is currently the best under-10 player in France. His undeniable contribution can only enhance the reputation of the Federation. Given his level of attainment, it is highly probable that he may represent France at international competitions such as the European and world championships.’
The big day arrives: 21 April 2010. I put on my favourite tracksuit, the white one. My father gets dressed up in his best clothes too. The hearing is in the afternoon. Lots of people come with us: friends from the hostel, both Bangladeshis and others, members of the chess club, Frédéric, Marie-Jeanne and even a director of the French Chess Federation. I didn’t know we had so many friends in France.
‘Don’t worry, Nura, it’ll all be fine.’
‘With an application like that, what can go wrong?’
‘Honestly, it’ll be a piece of cake.’
Everyone is smiling. Everyone except my father, who is overawed. At three o’clock we go into the courtroom. Behind a big table sit three judges, two women and a man. I’m surprised, as I thought judges wore robes and wigs, but these ones are in ordinary clothes. A man reads out from a sheet of paper, then our lawyer speaks. Afterwards, the judges ask my father questions and an interpreter translates. When my father doesn’t understand the question he nods his head, and the judges think he’s saying yes. When he understands he answers their questions, describing our life in Bangladesh, talking about me, about chess and tournaments. He gives good answers. I’m glad that no one asks why I was in danger in Dhaka.