by Fahim
‘Xavier, I’ve just had the prime minister’s office on the phone …’
Friday afternoon. School’s out and I’m fed up. Some of my friends poke fun at me. Since the television cameras came to film us all coming out of the school gates at the end of the day, the whole school knows. That day the kids created such mayhem that the camera operator had to wait for them all to go and then ask me to come out again.
I head off to the club. I’m going to meet Xavier and my father. I dawdle along the way: there’s no reason to hurry. When I get there Xavier is by himself, and his eyes look a bit red. Like when his mother was ill, but with a smile. A big smile.
‘Fahim, I need to talk to you.’
‘OK.’
‘Do you know what’s happened today?’
‘Um, no …’
He sits me down on the sofa and he tells me. All of a sudden it hits me. I bury my head in my hands:
‘You don’t mean to say the prime minister of France is interested in me?’
The week passes as though in a dream. The waiting drags on for ever. It’s unbearable. What if it really is just a dream? All around me people are running around getting papers together, doing all they can to build up a dossier that no one can challenge.
Friday, 11 May 2012. We’re on our way to the Préfecture. I have a smile on my face and fear in my stomach. Beside me, my father’s expression remains impossible to read. He’s dreading that there may be yet more unexpected problems: questions, demands, more waiting, another lost file. He won’t believe it until he’s holding our papers in his hand.
Outside the sunshine building, a handful of journalists are already waiting. The police officers smile at us, and one of them comes over to shake our hands. The mayor of Créteil, Laurent Cathala, arrives and greets us warmly. A man wearing a suit and holding a walkie-talkie comes to meet us at the gate and shows us the way. Laurent Cathala comes with us. I want to believe that this time it really is going to be good news. In my pockets my fingers are crossed. An entrance foyer, doors, corridors, stairs. At last we get there. On the door it says: ‘Director of Immigration and Integration’. I’m relieved: no tickets, no endless queues, instead there are two men waiting for us. We go in. I feel intimidated. They exchange a few words with the mayor, then they turn to my father. I look on the desk and my heart misses a beat.
‘Monsieur, here is your visa. It authorises you to live and work in France. And for your son, here is a laissez-passer that will allow him to travel within the Schengen area and to return to France without hindrance.’
My father is already holding out his hand to touch the precious document that will open all doors for us, when the mayor turns to say a few words to him. Suddenly everything seems to be happening too quickly, I’m not sure I can take it all in. My father looks at me as if to ask what’s going on, and I translate in a whisper:
‘The mayor’s office is going to give us somewhere to live. And they’ve found a job for you …’
Outside, it’s crazy. Friends, long-time supporters and a great crowd of journalists are waiting for us. People greet us and congratulate us, and we all congratulate each other. They ask me questions:
‘Now I’ll be able to live with my father, in our own home …’
I smile, really smile, smile at last. I believe it. It’s true. Inside my head a new day is dawning and a future is stretching ahead. A future that starts with the European championships in Prague and then stretches on way into the distance.
Yesterday I was just a faceless unknown, visa-less, homeless and stateless. I was a nobody.
Today I am champion of France, and I’m on the way to becoming a normal person again.
EPILOGUE
Fahim’s story ends here, at the moment when everything changed so dramatically for him, and he and his father were able to lead a normal life once more. So it falls to me to relate what happened next.
Three days after he received his papers, Nura started work. Ten days later, he and Fahim moved into an apartment, which was furnished for them by the network of supporters that had grown up around them. In under a fortnight, they had won everything for which they had been fighting for nearly three and a half years. Their nightmare was over. What a turnaround in their fortunes! Has a French championship title ever brought its winner so much?
In the summer Fahim flew off to the European championships, where his results were not brilliant. Life is not a fairytale. But a year later, in 2013, he won the World School Chess Championship.
Father and son are now inseparable again. Nura gets up at dawn and arrives at work every morning with the punctuality of someone who recognises the full value of what he has been given. Even if he is unwell he refuses to take time off, as he doesn’t want his co-workers to have to cover for him. It is impossible not to admire his tireless determination. On the first Sunday of every month he takes advantage of the lifting of entrance fees to visit the museums and galleries of Paris. But the ordeals of the last few years have left their mark on him. While his dignity has been restored to him, he still says little, and for him solitude has become a way of life. Exile is always a wrench of the most visceral kind.
Fahim, for his part, is still waiting to see his mother again. He struggles now to find the talent and spirit that were so much a part of him when he arrived in France. He still nurtures ambitions, certainly, as though determined to get his own back on fate, and he is resolved never again to be in a position of need. But in snatching his childhood from him, life has clipped his wings. Fear continues to distil its poison. At his age, it’s no easy matter to wipe the slate clean of three and a half years of hell. Fahim has already endured more hardship and sorrow than most adults in his adopted country will ever know. He’s no longer a king in hiding, but he’s still a king in recovery.
Yet as I watch him living from day to day, one minute so withdrawn and the next so dazzling, I can see that deep inside he’s still a king.
Sophie Le Callennec
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sophie would like to express her enormous gratitude to Xavier and Fahim for the trust that they have shown in her in asking her to write this story with them and about them, and also for overcoming their natural diffidence in order to tell it to her.
Xavier and Fahim would like to thank Sophie
for listening, for respecting their feelings and their silences,
for her flights of fancy, disagreements and vetos,
for her complicity and giggles,
for her journey of discovery of chess, her sometimes bizarre questions (yes, Sophie, it’s checkmate!) and the good grace with which she put up with them poking fun at her chess-playing skills,
for her depiction in words of the experiences of players and trainers,
for this book, and for their mutual affection.
Xavier, Fahim and Sophie would like to thank all those without whose involvement this book would never have been possible:
the players and organisers of tournaments, who answered Sophie’s questions and allowed her free access to the competition halls during events,
France Terre d’Asile, Réseau Éducation Sans Frontières and Hors la Rue for their testimonies,
the protagonists in this story who took the time to tell their stories,
Nura, who despite the barriers of language and natural diffidence returned at length to painful past experiences,
Marion and Laura, who generously lent their mummy to this project and patiently waited for her to finish her work before she finally realised that there was nothing in the fridge.
Fahim would like to express his immense gratitude to everyone, whether close friends or anonymous strangers, who has supported him and his father over the years, and who has made this story’s happy ending possible. It’s impossible for him to thank them all individually, but he would especially like to thank:
Hélène, Anna-Gaëlle and David, Gilles and Marie-Christine, Catherine and Patrick,
Muhamad, Frédéric and the CADA at
Créteil,
Yolande, Jean-Michel and the École Monge at Créteil,
Laurent Cathala and the Mairie of Créteil,
Alain, Alexis, Nadir, Nicolas, Isabelle …
the staff and volunteers of the humanitarian organisations,
Bastien, Hadrien, Jean Baptiste, Joachim, Laura, Olivier … and all the journalists who helped to make the Préfecture change its mind,
Marion, loyal France Inter listener, without whom nothing would have happened,
and of course Xavier, chess master, trainer and companion, in this book as in life.
How many children will we leave to sleep on the streets tonight?