by Fahim
‘You told us to put our jumpers on.’
‘Do you remember what Fahim said?’
‘Yes, he said he didn’t have a jumper.’
‘Did you understand what he meant by that?’
‘Well yeah, he’d left it at home.’
‘No. When Fahim said he didn’t have a jumper, he meant that he didn’t have a jumper.’
There was silence. The next week, the same boy arrived with a bundle of clothes for Fahim and Nura. At that point I think some of them began to open their eyes.
Without a visa, my father isn’t allowed to work. For a long time he has respected this ban, because he doesn’t want to be in a position that’s illegal. But he thinks it’s cruel that he isn’t able to make himself useful. So he helps out in any way he can. Rather than hanging around all day doing nothing, he does the cleaning at the chess club and a bit of gardening for Marie-Jeanne in Brittany, and he helps out at the hostel at short notice whenever the staff need it. It’s his way of saying thank you to all the people who have helped us.
He’s got into the habit of combing the streets to salvage anything that people have thrown away and that can still be used: televisions, microwaves, children’s clothes, crockery and so on. He takes it all back to the hostel and gives it to people who’ve just arrived and who have nothing.
Then my sister Jhorna becomes very ill. She has water on the brain and constant nosebleeds. She needs an emergency operation, but in Bangladesh there’s no social security: if the family can’t pay for the operation and hospital care, then the sick person stays at home. And they die.
My father is desperate. We don’t have a penny, and he needs to find 1,500 euros, urgently. Swallowing his shame at being forced to beg, he turns once again to Xavier, who – as always – comes to his aid. It isn’t enough, though. One of Xavier’s friends who we don’t even know pays the rest, and then a chess player offers my father a job helping him to re-lay his floor. For the first time in a long while, I see my father smile. He is taking control of our lives again. Jhorna has the operation and it saves her life.
XP: After this experience, Nura decided to defy the ban and carry on working. He couldn’t bear to be a burden on society any longer. From then on he searched everywhere, asked everyone, thought of every job imaginable. I lost count of the times he arrived at the club triumphantly brandishing one of those free newspapers, in which he’d circled lucrative-looking small ads promising ‘Top deals’, ‘Win 2,000 euros a month’, ‘Set up your own business’. Every time I had to be a wet blanket, warning him off cons and fraudsters.
He got it into his head that he was going to sell fruit in the Métro, but soon had to give up that idea. To get a contract with RATP, the transport operator, he would need a valid work permit. He thought he could use me as his front man, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I managed to convince him of the risks that we would both be running.
On another occasion he got wind of a small business selling mobile phones. I had to explain to him that this would undoubtedly be merchandise that had ‘fallen off the back of a lorry’.
But I did lend him the money to buy a Chinese trader’s stock of wallets, belts, hats, gloves, necklaces and miniature Eiffel Towers, and at the weekend he would set up a makeshift stall in the market at Montreuil. That brought him in a little money, until the police arrived and confiscated his stock, along with that of a lot of other minor street traders. He left with 10 euros in his pocket, upset but pleasantly surprised by the courteousness of the police officers, and relieved not to have been taken away by them.
Nura was an excellent handyman, and for a while he worked cash-in-hand as a painter on building sites, where he was greatly valued by his bosses for his efficient work and conscientious attitude. But his early positive experiences were soon followed by other less happy ones, such as the building site where he had to wait two months to be paid, the one where he was paid 150 euros for 75 hours’ work (or 2 euros an hour), and the one where after two weeks the foreman in charge claimed not to know who he was and sent him packing empty-handed. So then he decided not to work any more for people he didn’t know. But his lack of French narrowed down the possibilities. He couldn’t be taken on as the duty volunteer at the chess club, for instance, because he was unable to welcome visitors and answer their questions. Fortunately, tournaments were an opportunity to make new contacts. Some parents asked him to give chess lessons to their son in the afternoons. Fahim would go with him as interpreter. The journeys were time-consuming and meant that Fahim had to miss his own lessons. Nura stopped doing it.
The same concerns about location stopped him from taking up a job as full-time carer to a very old lady who lived on the outskirts of the Paris area. It was too far from Créteil for Fahim to be able to come to coaching more than occasionally. Nura was prepared to sacrifice everything for a job and a normal life: everything except his son.
His limited grasp of French was a source of daily frustration for Nura. Months after the event, he told me rather sheepishly – though he could also see its funny side – about an incident that had nearly tipped over into farce. After going to have his hair cut in the Belleville district, he had gone into a café to use the toilet. While he was waiting, a young Asian girl came up and started talking to him. He could make out the words ‘work’ and ‘40 euros’. Delighted at having found a job, or so he thought, he followed her back to her place. No sooner had they gone inside than she took all her clothes off and demanded 40 euros. Dumbfounded, Nura grasped the nature of the transaction and fled, while she yelled after him, calling him all the names under the sun.
Not all of Nura’s adventures were so entertaining: far from it, in fact. Through the experiences he confided in me, I learned about the world of those with no money, no documentation, no defences and no rights. As he was coming out of the Métro one evening, a man set upon him for no reason and started beating him up. He punched Nura to the ground, then attacked him with a volley of kicks. When a police car came around the corner, the attacker took fright and ran off. Their suspicions aroused, the police officers stopped the car and came over to Nura:
‘What’s going on here? Why were you fighting with that man?’
‘No worry, no worry,’ replied Nura, struggling to his feet with difficulty.
Then a bystander intervened:
‘I saw it all: this gentleman was coming out of the Métro minding his own business when the other man launched an unprovoked attack on him.’
The police officers’ attitude softened:
‘Are you all right, sir? Are you hurt?’
‘OK, no worry,’ protested Nura, terrified that they might ask him for his papers.
‘Would you like us to take you to hospital?’
‘No, no! All fine,’ he repeated, panic-stricken.
‘Come with us to the police station to make a statement.’
‘No, no! No problem. Much much no problem.’
‘But you need to stand up for yourself. Come with us.’
‘No, no! No problem, no worry.’
Nura was on the verge of tears. So plaintive were his pleas that the police officers let him go. He staggered painfully back to the hotel. The next day he had to drag himself to the nearest accident and emergency department.
I don’t know why, but for a while I’ve been going through a bad phase. I keep losing, even against weak players. At one tournament, I’m flattened in 30 moves. My opponent takes one of my pawns and attacks the rampart that I’ve built around my king. As he does it I just watch: I can’t react, can’t defend myself. When it gets to checkmate, it’s all I can do to stop myself from crying.
My father is furious. He flies into a terrible temper and won’t speak to me for two days. He doesn’t speak to me in the morning. He doesn’t speak to me on the way to school. He doesn’t speak to me on the way back from school. He doesn’t speak to me when we eat. He just says nothing, as if I’m not there. He won’t do anything for me. He doesn’t e
ven wash up my plate after supper. So I wait for him to speak to me. I know he will. He’ll have to, he needs me to translate. But it goes on for ever and it hurts.
Another time, he looks on as the game I’m playing collapses. I can feel him getting crosser and crosser. Soon all I can think about is how angry he is, I can’t think about the game at all. When the tournament is over, he picks up his things and leaves. I run after him, down the street, into the Métro. When we get to the hotel he won’t speak. I feel so bad.
I refuse to eat and go and sulk in front of the television. Luckily I find a packet of crisps in my pocket, a bet I won off a friend at the club. I eat them in silence and manage to make my father feel guilty. I’m not proud of myself, though.
Sometimes I overhear conversations between parents at the club without them realising. They say that it’s no good for a child to live like this, and that I’m disturbed by what’s happening to me. That annoys me, as they seem to be criticising my father and to think that the situation is his fault. And above all because I’m not disturbed, I refuse to be disturbed. In my head I want to be strong.
XP: While all this was going on, I went on the offensive with the Federation to get them to allow Fahim to compete in the French championship. It put my relationship with them under some strain: this was time spent in the wilderness for someone as outspoken as me, who knows that people don’t always want to hear the truth but prefers to tell it anyway. Behind the scenes, I put pressure on my contacts to change the rules and bring them into line with those of the major sports federations. The idea was picked up and championed by other people who had no idea where it came from. The championships were now opened up to all foreign children who were in full-time education in France, as long as they had a licence that had to be obtained at the beginning of the season.
The news brought a smile to Fahim’s face, even though lack of funds meant that he rarely took part in tournaments outside the Paris region. But the turn for the worse that he’d taken in the spring had become even more worrying by the autumn. He seemed to have lost his appetite for chess completely. When he sat down at the chessboard his eyes had lost their sparkle. He was half-hearted in lessons, at tournaments he just slumped in his chair, and his remarkable memory was losing its power. After one lost game, I looked at his score sheet and felt bewildered. Where was the Fahim I knew, the clever, agile rascal, the rebel fired up with reckless enthusiasm? After the opening, instead of sending his troops into battle he had retreated in order to defend a pawn that was of no importance. The victim of circumstances beyond his control, he avoided confrontation and withdrew anxiously into his own camp. He seemed to have lost all the fighting spirit that had been so much a part of him and had enabled him to reach his full potential. He was losing even that most fundamental attribute of a good player: his confidence in himself. He was becoming a timid and anxious opponent, who could work out his moves but had lost his dynamism. During coaching and at lessons, I would resort to every subterfuge – using provocation and humour on top of my teaching skills – in my attempts to reawaken the champion in him.
One evening when we’re playing, Xavier attacks and forces me to retreat. He frowns:
‘Fahim, the Russians never retreat!’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It’s a famous story about a Russian master who lost to a lower-ranking player by letting him capture his knight rather than retreating.’
‘That wasn’t clever, he lost!’
‘He lost that game, admittedly. But he was playing 30 opponents at once. And through his refusal to retreat he won the other 29. The Russians are great attackers. Take them as an example, adopt an attacking style. Never retreat and you’ll win most of your games.’
‘But I’m not a Russian,’ I shrug. Xavier doesn’t like it when I shrug.
‘True, you’re not a Russian. But in chess the Russians are the best, so take them as your example.’
‘I don’t like the Russians. I prefer the Napoleons!’
‘The who?’
‘The Napoleons. I learned about them at school: the Napoleons attacked the Russians.’
Xavier smiles.
‘And then what happened?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Didn’t your teacher tell you what happened when Napoleon’s troops retreated?’
‘Um …’
‘The Battle of Berezina.’
‘The what?’
‘The Battle of Berezina.’
Xavier tells me a tale of a frozen river, melting ice, drowned regiments and disaster. It’s fascinating. Then we start playing again. I am the Napoleons and Xavier is the Russians:
‘Look Fahim! The Russians never retreat!’
I refuse to give up any squares:
‘Nor do the Napoleons!’
After that game it becomes a sort of catchphrase for us:
‘The Russians never retreat!’
‘Nor do the Napoleons!’
At a tournament a few months later, I handle the opening well but then find myself plunged into the unknown. My opponent is pushing me into a corner but I refuse to retreat. In a sudden burst of arrogance, I launch a counter-attack, Russian-style.
‘It is at the moment of death that a chess player clings on to life,’ as Alekhine would say.
I refuse to give in, and soon my opponent is sweating like mad. He’s doing any old thing, and then he collapses. Phew! I’ve won! At last!
XP: Despite a few good games, Fahim wasn’t on the right wavelength for chess any more. ‘You can’t look up at the stars when you have a stone in your shoe.’ I wasn’t sure what to do, whether to give him some breathing space or to push him? But the one thing I know how to do is to be a trainer. Forcing him to get a grip, encouraging him always to do better was my way of supporting him so that he could keep his head above water. And on top of this I also had the feeling that somehow – even if I couldn’t see quite how exactly – chess could be a lifeline for him and his father.
At the time I put the emphasis on chess as a sport. I know it’s an idea that tends to raise a smile, but chess – sitting as it does at the interface of games, science and culture – is also a sport. In France it falls under the remit of the Ministry of Sport, moreover. To play chess you need to be fit both physically and mentally and to train regularly. Chess tournaments work like other sports competitions, with championships, rankings, trainers and referees. And if anyone objects that it’s not very physical, I would remind them that rifle shooting from a prone position is an Olympic discipline. And I’d add that, like footballers and tennis players, great chess players give up competitive playing around the age of 40, rather than struggling to continue to play at an international level.
With Fahim, therefore, I insisted that he should adopt the regime of an athlete, with plenty of sleep (even if a healthy diet wasn’t always possible) and a competitive stance: not slumped in his chair, but upright, chest out and arms crossed on the table to make his presence felt to his opponent. I hoped this would help him to rediscover the dynamic of the game, his will to attack and his will to win. His will to play.
That winter I go on the school ski trip. Since I don’t have any skiing kit, everyone chips in, at school, at the club and at the hostel. In the end, by the time we set off my bag is the biggest of all of them. It’s a long journey. The peculiar smell in the train carriage gives me a headache. It’s like being in a car, only with a different smell. Every journey is a bad memory.
It’s late in the evening when we get to the chalet. In our room we laugh and shout and make a noise late into the night. The others can’t sleep and Céline tells us off.
In the morning, some of the others sail effortlessly down the pistes, while I manage to get my skis on and try to look as if I know what I’m doing. But my feet slip from under me, my legs fly off in all directions and there’s no way I can stay upright. Luckily the others in my group are just as bad, and we all take turns to fall flat on our faces. I can’t stop laughing, es
pecially when a boy I can’t stand comes over and tries to act all cool but ends up in a heap at my feet. When it comes to my turn to show what I can do I really try hard: the instructor is nice and I want to impress her. I quickly change my mind about snow and fix on a goal: I’m going to go back with my flocon, my first ski qualification.
At the end of the trip I don’t want to leave – unlike some of the others, who’ve cried all the time as they’re so desperate to see their mothers again. I never cry about my mother, even when I’m feeling really miserable because I miss her so much. There’s no point: it won’t make her suddenly appear. But God knows how much I want to see her, to tell her about everything. About skiing. About tournaments. About all the rest. I imagine her putting her arms around me and telling me I’ve done well.
Sometimes we talk on the phone, always in a rush, with just time to say:
‘How are you?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Are you eating properly?’
‘Are you sleeping well?’
Sometimes she passes the phone to Jhorna or Fahad so that I can hear their voices. We tell each other we’re fine. And that’s it. Jhorna and I are like strangers now. And I don’t know Fahad at all. When I left he was still a baby and slept all the time. I don’t know anything about him. Who is he? What does he think about? What does he dream about? And what does he make of this big brother who he’s never seen?
The telephone is a link that tells us that we’re all still alive. Every time, my mother starts to cry and I cut the call short and hang up. I tell myself it’s because calls are expensive.
Letters are another link. I can still read Bengali, but I can’t write it any more. So I make do with reading the letters my mother sends, letters in which she says the same things over and over again: I’m well, everything’s fine, everyone’s well, you mustn’t worry about us, eat properly my son, sleep well, look after yourself. She doesn’t tell us that she’s run out of money, that she’s in debt, that she’s moved a long way out of the centre of Dhaka. She just says that everything’s fine. And I believe her.