A King in Hiding

by Fahim

  At the end, one of the lady judges says we’ll be informed of the outcome in three weeks’ time. The judges look happy, and so do the lawyer and my father and all our friends. Everyone congratulates my father. In three weeks his name will be posted on the wall, saying ‘Asylum granted’. And we’ll live in France for ten years, twenty years, maybe for ever. And we can bring over … but I can’t let myself think about that.

  Three weeks later, my father and I go back to the tribunal. In the Métro he’s nervous, and I don’t know how to reassure him, so I keep quiet. We get there just as the names are being posted on the walls. We look for my father’s name: Asylum granted … Appeal refused … Asylum granted … Appeal refused … Appeal refused. His name isn’t there: not under ‘Asylum granted’, not under ‘Appeal refused’. My father asks me to call our lawyer, who is reassuring:

  ‘The decision’s still pending, come back again tomorrow.’

  The next day my father gets ready to go back to the tribunal. My friends and I are just beginning a game of football.

  ‘Are you coming, Fahim?’

  ‘We’ve just started playing! Can you go by yourself?’

  ‘But I can’t read French.’

  ‘It’s simple: just look for your name with “Asylum granted” beside it.’

  My father sighs and sets off, and I go back to playing football.

  XP: The voice on the other end of the phone was unrecognisable. All Nura could say, over and over again, was: ‘Exavier, appeal refused, appeal refused …’ He didn’t need to understand French to know that in the cruel lottery of the asylum-seekers’ world he had played and lost.

  The man who came to see me at the club early that evening was not the Nura I knew. This was a man who was stunned, overwhelmed by a sense of injustice. His life had just fallen apart, and so had Fahim’s.

  Refusal by the tribunal was the equivalent of an ‘obligation to leave French territory’: it meant deportation from France. Nura’s situation was now illegal. It was at this point that I began to worry every time he went out, even if he was just going to pick up his son from school at 4:30. I had vivid images imprinted on my mind of an incident outside the primary school on rue Ordener in Montmartre, when parents who were undocumented migrants had been rounded up by the police and taken away.

  Paradoxically, this threat didn’t apply to Fahim: as a minor, he couldn’t be deported. The French authorities could send his father back, and leave him alone in France. I had done some research into what lay in store for unaccompanied child migrants in France. If he was lucky, Fahim would end up in a hostel, which would mean he would have to kiss goodbye to chess, coaching and tournaments. But worse than that, if there was no space in a hostel, he was in danger – like many other child migrants – of ending up on the streets, forced to queue up every night to beg for a bed from humanitarian organisations who are obliged by lack of funds to select those young people who are most at risk. I’d heard someone who worked with these children describing how one winter’s night the only thing he’d been able to offer a child who was sleeping rough was a sleeping bag.

  Later on, Fahim would be able to apply for asylum or a residence permit. I could imagine only too easily what would happen next, with his identity, date of birth and age all potentially called into question. Because the French authorities would undoubtedly try to deport him, and they would want to establish how soon they could do so. Even before his eighteenth birthday, they would demand a judicial medical assessment: an obsolete test of his bones, a dental examination (an echo of the slave trade in its heyday), and a humiliating assessment of his genitals and body hair.

  Although they were not yet at that stage, for Nura and Fahim a life on the streets now beckoned. France Terre d’Asile was financed by the public purse, and so could only offer accommodation to asylum-seekers. Now that their application had been turned down, father and son would have to leave the hostel and make way for new applicants. Fortunately the hostel staff were humane. They had been touched by Fahim and Nura’s story, and had become particularly involved in their application. So they put off the inevitable for as long as they could, and turned to the network of local charities to try to find alternative accommodation for them.

  Since the tribunal handed down its verdict, my father has been silent, worried, serious. He spends ages staring into empty space, and when we eat in the evening he forgets to talk to me. I don’t know what to say to make him feel better. He doesn’t react even when I tell him I’m going to be put up a class at school. But at the Paris championships in the early summer I manage to squeeze a smile out of him: I’ve made so much progress with my endgames that I win the tournament, playing against adults, and when I give him the first prize of 1,000 euros my father looks relieved.

  XP: During this tournament, a ‘guru’ figure circled around Fahim. The unconventional methods espoused by this ‘televangelist of Parisian chess’ (of necessity, as he barely knew how to play) were exemplary. He would teach beginners himself, but for the most promising pupils he would recruit masters and grandmasters from abroad, exploiting them like a slave driver. When the truth about his methods dawned on them, he would send them home and import others.

  Dressed up to look rather like Desmond Tutu, he would target relatives who were loaded with wealth (he would run a practised eye over the old biddies’ jewellery as he set his highly flexible rates) and with ambition, and who fondly imagined that their children were more intelligent than their peers. I even heard that he had managed to persuade one credulous grandmother to buy a ‘life membership’ for her grandson, who inevitably gave up chess soon afterwards.

  This ‘guru’ had a nose for sniffing out gifted players, and a talent for exploiting their prowess while convincing the world that it was all down to his teaching methods. So he hovered over Fahim, before offering money to Nura to sign him up for his club. When Nura – who doubtless had some experience of dealing with crooks and swindlers – mockingly suggested that he should ask me direct, his expression was a sight to behold.

  In the summer, my friends in the club set off to play in the tournament at Saint-Affrique in the Aveyron. I’m envious of them, but travelling around is expensive. I have to stay behind on my own with Xavier at Marie-Jeanne’s house, and I get a bit bored. I spend a lot of time on the internet, playing chess and going on journeys on Google and YouTube.

  On 26 July it’s my tenth birthday. I’m sad: now I’ll never be the French under-10s champion.

  ‘Xavier, did Einstein really say that “Chess players ruin their lives instead of doing important things”?’

  ‘He was talking about his friend Emmanuel Lasker, world chess champion, and what he actually said was: “The strong chess player is a man endowed with a brain of extraordinary abilities which he squanders fruitlessly at a chessboard instead of using them for far more important ends.” Was he right, do you think?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then hang on to this quotation from Tarrasch instead: “I have always had a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would for a man who is ignorant of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.”’

  I play in the Plancoët tournament, and for the first time in my life I play against an international master, the Bulgarian player Velislav Kukov. Sitting opposite him is exciting: I so badly want to beat him. At the start of the game he takes the advantage. I try to catch up. Too late. I’m caught in Kukov’s traps. I try to hold on. Help! All I can do is counter his attacks. Then suddenly inside my head I hear Xavier saying: ‘Don’t let your opponent lead you by the nose. A good player doesn’t think much of what his opponent does, despises it even. That’s why many people think chess players are conceited.’

  This gets a reaction from me, just as Kukov starts to slow down. He probably thinks I’m just a kid who doesn’t know how to follow up my moves. You have no idea who you’re up against, pal! He exchanges queens? Excellent! Exactly what I was counting on. Now I decid
e to go for promotion: I advance, I roll forward, I flood him with a wave of pawns. He refuses to sacrifice a bishop, and his rook falls into my trap. I send a pawn on ahead to release my queen. He spots his mistake. Too late! My first victory against a master. He’s so annoyed that he flings his score sheet across the board. I’m jubilant. Next day, Xavier shows me an article with my photo in a newspaper called Ouest-France. It’s a shame my father can’t read French.

  XP: The win against Kukov – doubtless helped (being realistic) by the fact that the master was exhausted after a long journey – was the culmination of good steady progress on Fahim’s part. He had listened to advice, put his coaching into practice, made a plan in his head, established a goal, put it into effect, and caught out a master. The young and gifted competitor was turning into a true player.

  This achievement also marked the end of an era. Fahim never spoke of his personal circumstances now. Whenever I talked to his father about such matters he would stand a little way off or look at something else, as if all the problems they faced didn’t concern him. While everyone else was devastated by the tribunal’s decision, he carried on looking as unconcerned as ever. Some people thought he was oblivious. And yet, this boy who was usually so composed now looked nervous in tournaments and couldn’t stop fidgeting. Already that spring, a championship final had shone a clear light on his state of mind. In a game that he had planned carefully both tactically and strategically, he was well ahead both in time – meaning his opponent had to play faster – and in position. He had seized control of all the white squares, so confining his opponent to the black squares, and he was fighting him for those every inch of the way. All of a sudden, when the game was virtually his, Fahim let a key defensive pawn go on the attack, opening up the field for his opponent. ‘Impatience in small things confounds great projects,’ as Confucius said. With a single move, he lost the game.

  I didn’t yet know it, but Fahim was about to be sucked into the depths of a dark vortex. Just as he was learning how to view his game strategically, he was overtaken by events. The boy who had loved the fight, the tension, the tactics and clever moves, now charged headfirst into the fray, preferring speed and bluff to reflection, not bothering to project into the future, trying to knock his opponent off balance through his sheer nerve, as though he was driven by an overwhelming secret rage. This boldness and daring would come into their own at fast-paced blitz games, but during slow games they could get him into trouble, and increasingly into danger.

  After the holidays in Brittany I go back to Créteil – in time to pack my bags. We gather our things together and leave them at the chess club, which isn’t used during the summer. I leave my trophies behind in Muhamad’s office, where he will keep them safe. The twelfth of August is heartbreaking. We walk out of the hostel, leaving behind us our friends and playmates, our sense of security and our hopes, and eighteen months of peaceful and almost normal life. We go to a small hotel on the other side of Créteil where the hostel staff have hassled the emergency helpline for homeless people into finding us a room. It’s clean and nice, but sad. When I open the window, the room is filled with the smell of the McDonald’s next door.

  As soon as we get there, I search my bags for my coin collection: euros, centimes, Arabic coins and loads of others from places I don’t know, that I’ve found on the ground or people have given me. Coins that I’ve kept in case one day I might need them. A secret treasure store that I keep in a red tin that my father brought home. I’ve stuck labels with the days of the week inside it. I’ve put each coin in the section matching the day when I found it, and all the sections are full. I haven’t shown my treasure to anyone, not even my friends. I get it out when I’m on my own, and it reassures me, makes me feel I’m rich. It was the first thing I got ready to put in my case. But I look everywhere and I can’t find it: it isn’t there. I can feel the rage rising inside me, rage at this life that’s taken away from me everything I have.

  Chapter 10

  LIFE ON HOLD

  Usually I like going back to school at the start of the year – for a day or so anyway – but this year I drag my feet all the way. Nothing’s how it used to be: my gang have made new friends, kids who’ve arrived at the hostel over the summer, and I feel left out. After school my father and I go to the hostel, where Yolande is waiting to help me with my homework. Everyone is very nice to us. While I do my school work, my father finds a little corner in one of the kitchens and makes us a hot meal: no sandwiches for us tonight. Then we go back to the hotel, where I let the time drift past, watch cartoons and go to bed to forget.

  Every other week, we have to phone the homeless emergency helpline. Since my father doesn’t speak very good French, I make the call for him. I feel awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassed by the feeling that we’re begging. When I pick up the phone I have a hollow feeling in my stomach: please let them say we can stay where we are. My father watches me intently, listening, studying my responses, straining to understand. Everything depends on me, as if I’m the adult and he’s the child. It weighs on me so much that sometimes I hang up and don’t say anything, don’t tell him what the answer was. Then instantly I feel sorry and I’m really nice to him again.

  We get another fortnight! Once, twice, three times! Then they’re going to do building work, so one day we have to leave and go to another hotel. Fortunately the helpline people manage to find us a room in a nearby town called Bonneuil. We pack our bags and move on again. And every fortnight I call again.

  Then we have to leave the second hotel, only this time the helpline can’t find us anywhere else to go. There’s no space anywhere. So I call back again, and again and again, until in the end they find us a room in Paris. Miles away. I write down the address on a scrap of paper, find it on a Métro map and explain to my father. We get moved on from one hotel to another, each of them worse than the one before, until one evening we find ourselves in a real hovel, a tiny, filthy broom cupboard at the end of a dark corridor, with toilets that are unusable and washing facilities on another floor. I didn’t know it was possible for anything to be so filthy. We cling on to the room even so, and I make my fortnightly calls over and over and over again: please let us stay here, please, please let us live here!

  My father wakes me up early. Exhausted, I catch the Métro for the journey to school in Créteil, which seems to go on for ever. At first Céline, my teacher, asks me why I look so tired, why I don’t pay attention. I’m too ashamed to tell her the truth, so I say I stayed up late watching television. But after a few days she stops asking, and when she goes round the class and between the rows of desks she sometimes puts her hand on my shoulder. After school my father takes me to the hostel or the chess club, then we set off on the journey ‘home’. Weekends are yet another round of endless journeys, to lessons, coaching and tournaments. I can’t cope with it any more. I fall asleep on the Métro. I fall asleep when we’re eating. I fall asleep at school. And when I play chess I rock to and fro all the time, like a robot with no off switch.

  Then one day my father snaps, not for himself, but for me. He asks me to call the helpline and describe how we’re being forced to live. To tell them. To beg them. At the other end of the line I can hear people talking. They sound embarrassed. Finally they find us a hotel in Saint-Maur, next door to Créteil. So we go back to Val-de-Marne and to a gentler pace of life. I go to bed earlier, get up later, go to school by bus, get my breath back. And I try to get rid of the black moths that are always fluttering about inside my head.

  On my father’s furrowed brow, worries pile up like storm clouds. We’ve run out of money. At the hostel we were given 285 euros a month to buy food, clothes and other essentials. It wasn’t much and we had to economise, but we managed. My father used even to set aside 30 euros each month for the time when we would leave the hostel and move into our own home. He would get cross if I wasted money. Like the time when I was playing with my friends on a hill, and the room key fell out of my pocket. I went back over my steps and l
ooked everywhere, but I couldn’t find it. My father lost his temper and shouted at me: having another key cut would cost 50 euros. Then he went round with that scary expression all day. After that I was more careful.

  Now he gets nothing. The 1,000 euros from the Paris championship has gone. Our pockets are empty. Some nights we have nothing to eat. Sometimes I think I’m going to die of hunger. Fortunately Xavier is there, always generous when we need to eat, buy trainers for school or pay entrance fees for tournaments.

  XP: Fahim and Nura spoke little about their problems: so little that not everyone around them was aware of their situation. Some people, naturally mindful of others and generous in their response, were always there for them, offering both financial and moral support. Not everyone though. One night I remember losing my temper with families at the club who would reel off all the usual clichés about ‘feckless’ foreigners who ‘weren’t capable of bringing up children’. Thinking of Nura, I told them how much respect these parents deserved – parents who were prepared to sacrifice their own wellbeing for the sake of their children’s future, men and women capable of travelling halfway round the world to ensure their children’s safety. Blinded by their prejudices, some of these people at the club hadn’t noticed a thing, and they were knocked sideways. I turned to one of the boys:

  ‘You remember last week, when the heating at the club was on the blink?’