A King in Hiding

by Fahim

  I hardly ever call my father when I’m away. We don’t need to speak to each other to be close. But that morning I do decide to call him, and he tells me. That France has run out of money, that the Prefect is going to close down all places in emergency hostels, that 600 families are going to be put on the streets.

  ‘Fahim,’ he says, ‘you absolutely have to win this championship. You’re our last hope. If you win, “they” might take notice of us. This is the moment. You’ve got to get noticed. Do it for us. Don’t come back without that trophy!’

  XP: With young players, parents hold in their hands the potential to do real harm. Some parents project their own ambitions on to their children and exert a terrible pressure on them, demanding the best results, the highest level, the most resounding victory. They fail to understand that all players play according to their individual abilities, progress at their own pace, and have to contend not only with that day’s opponent but also with their own changing moods and fluctuations in concentration. They forget that in order to win you have to concentrate on the chessboard, not on the result, or else it’s impossible to play well. How many times have I told my pupils:

  ‘Listen to the pieces, enter into the game, don’t think about the result, stay receptive to whatever your position requires.’

  And I’m not even talking here about parents who know nothing about chess, who see it solely in material terms and bemoan the loss of every piece, convinced that this is invariably due to some lapse in concentration, and blithely unaware that it might be the result of a strategic decision.

  This was a problem I never had with Nura. He was perfectly capable of giving Fahim a dressing down if his attention wandered. But he never came to inveigle me with suggestions: ‘You should tell him that …’ or ‘He really needs to …’ One day, however, I’d made the mistake of remarking that if Fahim won the French championship it might help them to re-open their case. So when Nura heard that the emergency helpline for homeless people was going to be shut down, he put terrible pressure on Fahim. The more intense the tournament became, the less confidently Fahim seemed to play, and the less able he was to concentrate. His strokes of brilliance became increasingly rare. Several of my colleagues, having heard people sing the praises of this young champion who had come to scoop the title, were evidently deeply puzzled.

  Despite all my tirades and pep talks, Fahim was indeed behaving like a submarine, but this was a submarine that had decided to sink down to the ocean floor and stay there. The result was a fiasco: Fahim finished in seventh place, behind players who were not only weaker than him but also less talented.

  Coming on top of Fahim’s lack of progress during the year, this defeat led me to do a lot of soul-searching. Where was the Fahim of our early days together, focused and headstrong, lively and determined? Had he been so damaged by the ordeals of life and his experiences in France that he was no longer capable of fulfilling his potential? Had his gifts vanished for ever? Or was it my fault: was I still the right trainer for him? Perhaps he needed a trainer who was younger, more like him?

  Back in Paris, I asked one of my former pupils, Jonathan, if he would look after Fahim. Being young and of Indian origin, perhaps he could be more of a role model for Fahim? This looked as if it had a chance of working out, with the two of them planning practice sessions and tournaments. But Jonathan was busy and their plans got bogged down, and in the end I carried on as Fahim’s trainer.

  When I get back to Créteil, defeated and empty-handed, my father isn’t even angry. He doesn’t say anything. It’s as though he isn’t there. He doesn’t say anything either when my school report arrives: my marks are in free fall and my start to the next school year is not exactly covered in glory.

  At the beginning of the summer I play in the Paris championship again. Xavier pushes me to compete at the next level up:

  ‘You don’t play again for a title you’ve already won once.’

  But I’m dead set on the idea of winning the 1,000 euro prize money, which we so desperately need, and I stay in the same category as last year. I finish in 47th place.

  XP: At the Paris championship another trainer came up to me looking rather smug:

  ‘Xavier, my pupil beat yours!’

  ‘Yes, but just look at Fahim, take a good look at him. Do you have any idea why he lost? The emergency homeless service has just been closed down. The hostel where he and his father live has put them out on the street.’

  July in Paris. It’s part of my routine now. I call the emergency helpline. Every time my father’s worried, on edge. Every time they say we can stay at the hostel for another fortnight. Until the day when the bomb drops:

  ‘You have to vacate the room,’ the lady says.

  My heart misses a beat. I can’t speak.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘But where are we going to sleep?’

  The lady is embarrassed:

  ‘I don’t know. I understand your difficulty, but we aren’t allowed to give out rooms any more.’

  I can’t believe it. I hang up, then call back again straight away. Several times. It’s the same answer every time. We’re out on the street. It’s all over. My luck has run out.

  My father rushes off to see the social worker. Her name is Véronique, she’s nice, she’ll find a solution for us. But Véronique has gone, and the lady who’s replaced her is chilly, indifferent, rude. As soon as we start to explain why we’re there she throws us out. My father talks about her to this day:

  ‘She very very not good.’

  Of all the people we’ve met on our journey, I think she’s the only one he bears a grudge against. While my father stays in Créteil to try to find a solution, Xavier takes me off to Marie-Jeanne’s house for the summer. I spend my days daydreaming. I dream that I live on a boat, that I’m sailing around the world, that I explore everywhere and see everything. I dream I’m the most powerful man in the world, a lord, a king, an emperor. I dream of escaping this world, of walking on the clouds, of living on the moon. And when I come down to earth and realise that all this is impossible, I dream of simply being rich enough to buy a beautiful sports car and go wherever I want to. Especially to the European championships.

  Back in Créteil, my father is living at the chess club, where Hélène has said we can stay for the summer. He sleeps on the sofa, but he’ll have to leave when the new school year begins and the club starts up again. On the telephone he tells me all the things he’s tried. He agreed with the president of a Paris chess club that in return for accommodation and pay he would clean their premises and teach for a few hours a week. The president painted a glowing picture of the advantages for me of going to school in a part of Paris that attracts the right sort of people and with a major high school close by. My father accepted on condition that I could continue to train at the Créteil club. My progress in chess mattered to him more than anything, and my trainer was Xavier! The president agreed, but then things got confused. The president announced online that I was joining his club, trying to put pressure on my father, who wouldn’t give an inch. Then he dropped my father like a stone and gave him a tent instead.

  When the Créteil club re-opens at the end of the August, my father goes off to live in his tent. He wants to pitch it in the grounds of the apartment building where the club has its premises, as this would be practical, but Hélène has to explain to him that it’s not allowed. So he takes himself off and pitches it on the roof of a supermarket, where no one can see him, and when he gets moved on from there he camps out beside a tennis court in some public gardens.

  This is where I find him when I get back from Brittany at the end of the summer. The first night is awful. The ground is hard, a thunderstorm is rumbling and it starts to rain. My teeth are chattering, I’m cold and frightened, and I feel dirty and ashamed. All night I ask myself what I’ve done to fall so low. By the morning I’m in pieces. Devastated and lost for words, my father cannot bring himself to look at me.

  XP: The economic crisis t
hat engulfed Europe in the late summer of 2011 brought with it a social crisis that was just as acute: long queues formed outside the ‘Restos du Cœur’ soup kitchens and food banks, and the shanty towns that had disappeared 50 years earlier from the verges of French motorways and the Paris ring-road sprang up once more. ‘It’s like the Tex Avery cartoon where everyone keeps passing round the stick of dynamite before it blows up,’ lamented Xavier Emmanuelli, founder and president since 1993 of the Samu Social, which ran the homeless helpline, in his dramatic resignation speech. If even Emmanuelli had given up …

  By that time I’d been feeling out of my depth for a while, unable to help Fahim and Nura. I had no more solutions to suggest, no more plans to offer: I’d run out of steam. And once they were out on the street I was unaware of their plight, as I was being chased by my publisher and had cut myself off from the world, physically and mentally, so as to devote my time to writing a long-promised book.

  Paradoxically, my absence turned out to be a good thing. Fahim and Nura’s plight had plunged the club into turmoil. That same evening, Hélène made calls to a number of families. Since the state had washed its hands of them and would no longer provide support services or any other humanitarian aid, ordinary citizens would have to roll up their sleeves. In my absence, the more caring, generous and open-minded members of the club took over. It’s not hard to imagine the discussions that must have taken place in different homes that night:

  ‘We can’t let that boy sleep on the streets.’

  ‘But we haven’t got room to put him up.’

  ‘We can make room. But we have to recognise that the delicate balance of family life is a fragile thing, and the arrival of an outsider can be challenging.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, but if he dies of cold how can we ever look each other in the eye again?’

  ‘You’re right, we have to make room for him. But what about Nura? We can’t separate them.’

  ‘No, of course we can’t, but we really haven’t got enough room for two people. Let’s take in Fahim, get him ready for the start of the school year and then take things one step at a time.’

  ‘What will we do when we go away at weekends?’

  ‘We haven’t got all the answers right now. Let’s start with tomorrow night. If we start the ball rolling other people might follow our example.’

  With two children of her own, Anna-Gaëlle had room in her heart for more. She and her husband David were the first to open up their home to Fahim. Later on, Gilles – a loud, larger-than-life character with a pronounced Mediterranean twang – and his wife Christine were to step into the breach.

  Every morning Anna-Gaëlle wakes me up – with difficulty – and I go to school. In the afternoon I go and find my father at the club. If he has any money he buys me a snack. Then I do my homework and work on my chess. The club office has become my study. In the evening we eat there, then my father walks me back to the apartment block where Anna-Gaëlle and David live. If they’re still eating when I arrive, I sit down with them to eat some more. Then Anna-Gaëlle puts her sons to bed. I sit on the bed to listen to the bedtime stories she reads to them. When she stops reading I get up to go, but I pause in the doorway to watch as she kisses her children goodnight.

  Then I go to bed and think. I think about my father on his way to the vast artificial lake in the middle of Créteil; my father waiting until it’s dark, until the last fishermen and lovers have gone, before pitching his tent; choosing a spot where he won’t get soaked at dawn by the automatic watering system; sleeping on a second-hand mattress, until it gets soaked by the rain and becomes unusable, and he has to sleep on the ground.

  I think about my father zipping up his tent and taking one last look at the Préfecture building on the far side of the lake, orange in the daytime but gloomy at night, the same Préfecture that won’t give us our papers. My father crying himself to sleep, wondering how it can be that a country as big as France, with so many buildings, can’t find room for him, just a little space, so that he wouldn’t have to sleep outside; my father praying, though he’s not very religious, and asking his god angrily why he has abandoned him on the streets.

  I think about my father getting up at dawn, opening his tent and looking out at the Préfecture, his first sight of the day, then rolling up the tent and heading off for the club, washing in the little handbasin (except on days when he has €1.50 and can go to the public baths at Châtelet); my father doing our laundry in the washbasin (except on days when he has €2.00 for the launderette) and draping it over the radiators to dry, on condition that he takes it off again before the club opens.

  I think about my father getting provisions from the Restos du Cœur food bank, tidying away our cases, boxes and bags so they aren’t in anyone’s way, doing the washing up, dusting the shelves, sweeping and washing the floors, doing everything he can so that he won’t have to hear people complaining that the club has become ‘just like a campsite’ and that it ‘smells of frying’.

  I think about my father going to the Préfecture, going to see the lawyer, going to see the interpreter, going to see Frédéric, going to French lessons, greeting the children at the club; and after everyone has left, leafing through the books that are left lying around, dozing on the banquette, letting the endless days drift past as he waits for me to come back.

  I think about my father with no money and no one left, living only for me. My father who can’t afford a Métro ticket any more, who can’t afford to buy me a pen, or a jumper. My father filled with shame, forced to beg for everything he needs.

  I think about my father who can’t take any more, who is sinking a little deeper every day, who loses his temper for no reason, and then can’t even get angry; my father who never tells me off any more, who never shouts at me, who never smacks me, who never talks to me, who never speaks, who just waits, holding his head in his hands.

  I think about my father who I don’t live with any more, my father who I pass in the hallway as children go in and out; my father who I am getting further and further away from, or who is getting further and further away from me, I don’t know any more. I think of him at night and I can’t sleep.

  I’m tired. I don’t do my schoolwork. I start being cheeky. The teachers tell me off. My marks take a nosedive. My chess playing has never been so bad.

  XP: Nura never complained, but he exuded despair. He had aged. Life had etched itself on his features. Being forced to do nothing, to be useless and to live in fear had destroyed him. He would spend hours just sitting or lying, not saying a word, not doing a thing, not moving, not looking at anyone any more. He was so damaged that I used to wonder if he would ever be capable of turning things around again, of getting back on top of things so that one day he could get a job and reintegrate into society. I was equally at a loss with Fahim who, driven by feelings of solidarity, of unconscious imitation or despair, more and more often went to sit with him and do nothing too.

  My father never stops thinking about Spain. Spain was his original destination, and he regrets having stopped en route. He often says that if we’d carried on he would already have papers, a house and a job. He says that if France doesn’t want us, he should carry on to Spain. Every time I persuade him to change his mind. I tell him to wait for the Préfecture’s response, I explain that I don’t want to leave, that I’ve got used to France, that I don’t speak Spanish, that I don’t want to leave my school, Xavier, the club, my friends, that we’d have to begin all over again.

  Even when he’s not talking about Spain, he’s thinking about it so hard that you can see it in his face. Then, with no work, nowhere to live, no money, no papers, no future and no strength left, stuck in a dead end and with his family far away, my father decides to make a fresh start and head for Spain. On his own. Without me. He says he’ll leave me at Créteil and try his luck somewhere else. He says that Anna-Gaëlle, Hélène and above all Xavier will look after me, that I will have a good life, that his life lies elsewhere, that he will come back a
nd fetch me if he gets papers, a job, money. Maybe.

  I don’t say a word. I scream.

  Back at Anna-Gaëlle and David’s apartment I run and hide in the bedroom. Anna-Gaëlle sees me as I tear past: she can tell at a glance that something serious has happened and comes to find me straight away. I burst into tears. I cry like a baby. She asks me questions, does her best to make out my answers, tries to console me, assures me that we’ll find an answer. It’s no use. I’ve lost my mother, I’m going to lose my father. I’m alone in the world. I want to die.

  That night, I dream that I go to the club. It’s all in darkness, the windows are broken, and I can sense a presence hiding in the shadows: a giant wearing glasses who I know without really knowing who it is. He has a long knife and is going to stab me. When I try to run away, someone pushes me back inside. I wake up with a start. My heart’s thumping, I feel sick, I’m so frightened that I don’t dare move an inch.

  In the morning, David is sitting at his computer in the living room. Terribly worried, he’s been up all night trying to find a way for my father to stay in France. He’s sent a thousand messages in bottles across the ocean of the web. He’s a journalist, and he knows a lot about all this. For days he tries everything he can think of, networking and making contacts, sometimes filled with hope and then discouraged again. Eventually he makes contact online with Catherine and Patrick, who live in Paris. They have a big apartment and are willing to take my father in. It isn’t the first time for them: they’ve offered people a place to stay before.

  Anna-Gaëlle and David are stunned by their generosity, and my father hardly dares believe it’s true. But it is! Two days later, he moves into ‘his’ room, a proper bedroom with a bed, a mattress, blankets and a wardrobe. What luxury! That very night, the first big chill of the autumn falls over Paris, and over all the people who are still sleeping out there on the streets.